Ad stacks?

So, as best as I can recall, every paper I've ever worked at had ad stacks running lowest to highest from left to right. At my current paper, it's been that way for the last 5 years that I've worked here.

Now, the ME is trying to convince us that 1. It looks best to have the stacks go highest to lowest on even pages; and 2. That we've always done it that way.

It doesn't seem like I or anyone else here can convince him otherwise on either count, and I honestly don't care enough to choose this fight, but I was just wondering if anyone else's paper ran their ads like that.

 

Two of my three papers have ad stacked from outside in, which sounds to me like what your managing editor is pushing.

Advertisers prefer being on the outside of the page because they're seen even if someone is just flipping and looking at page numbers.

 

Yes, we just switched to the outside-in format a few years ago.

 

Here in Florida, most newspapers shifted their philosophy around 1998 or so ... instead of placing ads flush to the gutter, ads moved to the outside of the pages. Where they used to stack like a mountain toward the center of a spread, they now stack like a valley. No big deal. I'm more concerned by the trend of no longer using hairline or 1-point rules to separate ads from editorial.

 

I'd be more concerned about the lack of ads to stack, but in a recent redesign we did add a 1-point rule at the bottom of squared-off ad stacks.

 

Well, there's that.

 

ads? What are those?

 

They stack ours on the outside which is great except when they're not quite big enough to reach the top of the page. Then it leaves a shitty white space because the only thing that would fit is a hed

 

Can't you slide a fill ad at the bottom of a stack like that? "Podunk Press is a proud member of the community, call ????? to subscribe."

We have tons of those options to make our ad breaks clean. Everything from public service to plugs to like us on Facebook.

 

I always had fun creating different variations of those. My last paper had a library of about 25 "house/fill ads" of all shapes and sizes, plugging different sections and coverage areas, because invariably we'd have a 2-inch gap between the ads and the folio somewhere inside.