• TheStar.com, Friday, October 5, 2007 11 AM

The Toronto Star will change the way it sells space early next year, switching to modular ads and sectional pricing where advertisers get charged different rates depending on which part of the paper their ads are in. The aim is to provide the same standardized sizes and target opportunities found in other media, like online, TV and radio.

Says publisher Jagoda Pike. "Newspapers have always been thought of as mass mediums, but through sectional pricing, the The Toronto Star becomes much more than that and offers unprecedented opportunity for targeting." Most newspaper advertising is sold by the line and prices are based on the size of the readership, but modular ads are in standardized sizes and The Toronto Star will offer 24 of them starting in January.

While modules are used by some big U.S. newspapers, The Toronto Star wants to develop a model that is adaptable to the rest of the print industry, says Wayne Clifton, vice-president of advertising. For Fred Forster, president of media agency PHD, sectional selling is long overdue: "There's always been frustration for advertisers who don't necessarily want to be in the upfront section of the paper, (who) want to be in a specialty section but are paying the same rate for less readership," he notes.

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