Print advertising

Print means paid space in a physical publication: a full page in a regional lifestyle title, a half page in a trade magazine that reaches a specific job title, a strip in a local newspaper, an insert in a programme, or the inside front cover of a quarterly. You buy an insertion in a named issue, and for that issue the page belongs to you alone.

The mechanics are the oldest and least forgiving on the marketplace. There is a booking deadline, a copy deadline and an on-sale date, and only the first is negotiable. Once the title goes to press nothing about the page can change, which is why the value of print sits in dwell and credibility rather than in speed.

Space is sold as a fraction of the page: full page, double-page spread, half page horizontal or vertical, quarter, sixth, and strips across the foot of a page. A standard A4 title trims at 297 × 210 mm, but tabloid newspapers, Berliner formats and squarer magazines all differ, so every booking works from the title's own specification sheet rather than a generic size.

Position is priced separately from size. The inside front cover, the first right-hand page, the page facing contents and the outside back cover are the premium slots, and they carry roughly a quarter to a half over the run-of-book rate for the same space. Everything else is run of book, placed wherever the layout allows unless you pay for a guaranteed position. Advertorials, loose and bound inserts and cover wraps are priced as separate products, with inserts usually quoted per thousand copies.

The unit is one insertion in one issue. Rates fall with commitment rather than with volume — a series booking of three, six or twelve insertions is discounted well below three separate bookings, because the publisher is buying certainty as much as you are buying space. Ask for the series rate even if you intend to start with a single page, so you know what the second and third would cost before you commit to the first.

Every title also carries remnant space: pages still unsold as the issue closes, offered at short notice and a large discount to anyone with artwork ready. It is the cheapest way into a good title and the least controllable, since you take the position you are given in whichever issue has a gap. Premium positions go the other way and are sometimes sold by closed bid, where sealed bids are taken and the page goes to the highest at close.

Circulation is the number of copies distributed, and it should be audited by an independent bureau. Readership is a larger figure produced by multiplying circulation by an assumed number of readers per copy — an estimate, using the publisher's own multiplier. Treat the audited circulation as the fact and the readership as the argument.

The distribution split matters more than either number. Paid subscription copies indicate an audience that chose the title; newsstand sales indicate reach without loyalty; free or controlled distribution indicates neither on its own — except in trade titles, where controlled circulation is the entire point. A B2B magazine going to eight thousand named specifiers in one industry is worth more than a general title with ten times the copies, because the list is what you are buying. Ask for the audit certificate and check its date.

Supply PDF/X-1a in CMYK, with images at 300 dpi at final size, fonts embedded, 3 mm bleed on every edge and important type at least 5 mm inside the trim. Convert spot colours unless you have paid for them. Watch total ink coverage on newsprint, where a rich black fills in and soaks, and remember that a double-page spread loses several millimetres into the gutter, so nothing critical goes down the middle.

The deadline is real in a way other formats' deadlines are not. Press time is booked with the printer months ahead, so a monthly title typically wants final artwork around three weeks before it goes to press. Miss it and you are in the next issue, not late in this one. Publishers pre-flight what you send and come back on anything that fails, so leave a day or two in hand for that exchange.

It buys undivided attention on a page nobody else is on, in a context the reader chose and often paid for. Nothing else here hands a whole surface to one advertiser for as long as the reader keeps the copy, and a trade title reaches a defined professional audience by name in a way no geographic medium can approach. The physical object lingers — a quarterly sits on a table for months.

Against that: it is slow, it is fixed, and circulations in most consumer categories are falling. There is no way to change a headline, correct a price or react to anything once the issue is printed. And response is invisible unless you build it in, so a dedicated URL, a QR code or a unique phone number is the only way to know whether the page worked.

Ask for the media pack, the current audited circulation figure and the date of that audit, then for the distribution split between paid, subscription and controlled copies. Ask what the issue's editorial features are — a page beside relevant editorial is worth more than the same page in a block of advertisements at the back — and whether a right-hand page can be secured.

On the commercial side, confirm the booking deadline, the copy deadline and the cancellation deadline, which are three different dates. Confirm what arrives afterwards: a tear sheet or printed copies as proof of publication. And if you are buying a series, confirm whether the rate is protected if the title changes size, frequency or circulation part-way through the run.