Today’s edition has this great CBS ad.
An excellent ad design.
The ad is two-and-a-half inches high, and lies horizontally across the bottom of the front page, below the news articles and a brief summary of some articles in the paper.
In the past, The New York Times has printed an occasional and very expensive front-page classified ad — two or three lines of text at the bottom of the page.
A few years ago the paper began to sell display ads on the front pages of sections inside the paper.
The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times do the same.
The Washington Post, does not.
But this will change very soon.
In Europe, Australia, Asia and Latin America this is a common practice.
If these advertisers pay a lot of money, sometimes for exclusivity, and the ads are for long-term contracts, the question is not if this is good or bad, but why the managers of The New York Times didn’t do this many, many years ago.
The New York Times didn’t say how much it’s charging CBS.
But let’s assume that these ads are $50,000 each.
In the last 10 years, they would have had extra ad income in excess of $180 million.
Not bad.