Weird ad in Cincinnati Enquirer

Took the family to the Great American Blast Furnace for a Reds game on Sunday. Being house-poor, that was our vacation. Anyhow, I picked up the Enquirer and there was an ad layout I'd never seen before on an inside sports page.

It was a tire ad (what else), but it was placed in the middle of the page, with copy surrounding it on all sides. It was shaped like a tire, so two stories ran on each side, with a runaround around the ad itself. Think of it almost as a package item, only it was an ad.

It was ugly, just a standard-fare black-and-white ad, but I'm guessing it cost the tire company a little more for the placement.

Anyone seen/dealt with this kind of ad?

 

Yep; that's called an "island" ad. Very common on stocks pages, and in European newspapers.

 

The last few months, we've had to run a "shadow ad" from a local business on an agate page or with MLB boxes.

It's the company's logo, but it's placed BEHIND the copy on the page (the black/white ad is at like 30% gray). First couple times we ran it, they hadn't worked all the kinks out and so it basically made both the agate text and the logo look indistinguishable from each other. Now, it's better but I can't imagine any reader is looking at that ad when they're scanning box scores. Maybe they are -- it's been a few months, and they're still paying big money for it. It looks like crap, but obviously ... that's not the point.

 

I'm occasionally involved in some systems-type discussions at my paper and this is becoming more and more popular. Advertisers want this stuff and if you can at all support it technologically, you better get working on it.

The watermark ad (what buckweaver is referring to) could become a stock tables staple (for those who still run them). Odd shapes? Floating circles? Triangles? Yeah.

 

Headlines with the King.

 

Don't forget our convergence partners.

 

We're about to start using those ads at my shop, except we call them "cascade" ads. The Louisville paper had them all over their special section for the Kentucky Derby. It's a little odd, and there might be some confusion between what is editorial and what is advertising, but overall, anything that draws eyes to a paper is fine by me. I consider them the pop-up adds of newspapers.

At least they aren't those awful post-it note ads some papers stick on the front page.

 

Not that bad. A machine rolls them onto the front coming off the press. And all it covers is part of the flag.

And I ain't bitching about revenue streams. Anything that'll keep our staff manned-up without layoffs is fine by me ... short of whoring out our agate clerk.

 

Damn. There goes my employee of the month award for suggesting new revenue streams.