Meta-vertising

by Miriam Hara | Mar 23, 2011 | Advertising

Let’s face it.

Things have been challenging for print advertising. The rise of social media has made it apparent that online, mobile content gives clients more opportunities when trying to leverage sales.

The recession also didn’t help.

You’d think advertising budgets would go down, but is that really true?.

New trade ads show print media is investing in advertisements for advertisers – defining their readership in order to attract the right ones.

In the good old days, publications were the platform, period.

But according to Nielsen ratings, Canadian ads fell 21 per cent in the last year. And so print must respond, “We are worthy!”

Despite global cuts to ad funding, more and more publications have chosen to invest in their own in-house marketing departments and now ad revenue is climbing.

Media buyers and advertisers are selecting ad space with a critical eye and marshalling traffic for strategic placement.

The market is pressing reset, and largely distributed publications are launching these sophisticated marketing outfits in order to (re)define their readership and attract the right consumers.

The Globe and Mail’s Globe Media have launched a campaign that “gives a glimpse inside the lives of [Globe & Mail readers].” Oxygen magazine went so far as to label their ideal reader as the “O Generation,” creating a trade ad, which depicts a young, fashionable blond woman carrying an iPod™.

Savvy of their image, modern print media is strengthening their revenue backbone, turning the financial tables by controlling what they have, in the past, relied so heavily on.