Wrapping an ad around content? *Shudder*
Our pal Kathryn Morton of the Central Penn Business Journal writes:
Check out BusinessWeek’s Numbers page this week. Normally, their stats page is its own half page:
But this week, they just put it in the middle of an ad:
It took a few seconds for it to register what she was seeing, Kathryn says.
In a way, though, this really isn’t surprising at all. BusinessWeek isn’t doing so well, we’re told. 24/7 Wall Street reports:
Its advertising pages fell 16% in 2008, according to data from industry research letter MIN. The magazine’s ad pages are down 38% this year through the end of April, and in the most recent issue, the drop was an extraordinary 63%.
As the ad revenue crisis continues, you’ll see more and more of this “creative” mixing of editorial and advertising. And a lot of it makes us shudder.
Like this ad plastered on the front cover of Esquire earlier this year:
Or the infamous L-shaped faux-news piece on the cover of the Los Angeles Times:
Or ads slicing into news copy like this (left) or this (right):
June 24th, 2009 at 10:07 am
More examples of knee-jerk reactions that were put in place by bigwigs without any real thought.
June 24th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
By “its own half page,” I meant its own page (on half a spread). Duh, me. Not too much surprises me as far as ad shapes and placement these days, but I think this is the first time I’ve noticed editorial content in an ad versus an ad in the middle of editorial content.