Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 9, 1993 TAG: 9309090048
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
A 3 1/2-by-2 5/8-inch Northwest Airlines ad appeared on the upper right side of the Money section's front page for the first time Tuesday.
For its size, the promotion has caused a large amount of controversy and comment.
Other Northwest ads will appear in the same space every weekday for a year, USA Today spokesman Steve Anderson said.
Newspaper rarely place ads on the front pages of inside sections, and almost never at the top of those pages.
Anderson wouldn't discuss how much Northwest was paying for the spot, but he said advertisers talking with the newspaper about buying identical space at the top of USA Today's Sports and Life sections will be offered one-year deals that generally will cost $2.3 million.
"We've kicked the idea around for a while. It's nothing new to newspapers, for example, in Canada and in Europe," Anderson said. "The demand was there, and we felt that now was a good opportunity to offer advertisers really a very strong buy."
He declined to say which advertisers were interested in buying the space, but the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. of Chicago, the chewing gum manufacturer, said it will begin a yearlong series of ads in the Life section next month.
"Basically, we're always looking for effective and efficient advertising and we think this is a great media buy," Wrigley spokesman Christopher Perille said.
An industry analyst predicted journalists will be concerned about the ads appearing in spaces traditionally reserved for news.
"It will probably get some flak from the journalistic community. But probably from the business sense, it's not a bad idea," said Kenneth T. Berents, a media analyst for Wheat First Securities Inc. of Richmond.
"I think you're going to find a great divisiveness over this kind of issue - those who will say, `No, the news pages are sacrosanct,' and those who will say, `Hey, we're in a different era and we've got to fight for every revenue dollar we can get,"' Berents said.
The spot where the ads appear is adjacent to an area at the top of each section - including the front page - where the paper promotes stories within that section.
USA Today, the flagship daily publication of Gannett Co. Inc., said it sells about 2 million newspapers a day and estimates daily readership at 6 million.
by CNB