Tips, tricks and advice for advertising management and print production.
Jennifer | 10:23 pm | September 17, 2007 | magazine, ads, prepress, newspaper, budgets, money, workflow, planning
Yes, running ads in print media is expensive. Your media rep will tell you that repetition is the key in print advertising and that adds up fast. So how do you find the money for producing the ad?
As always, a little preparation goes a long way. There is nothing more expensive than last minute ad creation. You’ll end up with lousy creative, which wastes all those advertising dollars. If you know you’ll be running in magazines and newspapers, you should be planning your media and production months in advance (for newsprint, get going on the production 4-6 weeks ahead of the first ad insertion).
One of the best ways to save money on the production end is by purchasing ads of similar sizes across your publications. Not only does this help solidify your brand look, it means less ad sizes need to be designed and produced. This can save you a lot of money.
Another money saver relates to ad sizes. If you get ad sizes that are similar you can “float” the ad. If your first ad size is 5″ x 7″ and your next size is 4.75″ x 6.5″, you simply build the smaller size ad, and let the ad “float” in the larger area. This is commonly done in newspaper advertising, where no bleeds are involved.
If you have an image you want to use in your ads, make sure you plan how and where you will use it, then send mechanicals for all publications along with the image to your service bureau or designer. This way any scanning is done once and the prepress supplier can build multiple files all at once, bringing down your prepress costs.