No need to accept slumping ad sales

Ad departments can reverse the trend toward lower ad sales revenue by working with advertisers to produce high quality ads that bring revenue to their papers and to their clients, says Bob McInnis, an American ad sales and management consultant.

Bob McInnis insists slumping ad sales are not an inevitability. Photo by Aaron Lynett/Toronto Star

 McInnis, whose Response Oriented Selling program has been implemented by several dailies in the US and Canada, says he’s always floored when newspapers tell him: “Gone are the days when we should see ad revenue increases.”

 Outlining some of the steps involved with his program, McInnis showed a crowd of publishers and advertising reps how they could work with clients to bring their ad money back to the paper.

 McInnis says the reason so many potential advertisers are no longer putting their money into newspaper is because they have been allowed to run ineffective ads in the past.

 ”The biggest problem that you’re facing out there is that customers want ads to be done their way. Not the way they need to be,” said McInnis.

 “Prospective advertisers have their own theories about content, size and frequency” but in many cases, those theories are flawed, he said.

 The resulting failure of many ads to produce a return has left many advertisers to believe that newspaper ads cost more money than they’re worth.

 “What we’re talking about is fixing the damage that’s in (advertisers) brains so that they will have that epiphany,” said McInnis, in explaining how advertising reps need to show disenfranchised clients that the reason their ads may have failed in the past was thanks to poorly designed ads, and not the paper.

 A good ad is as important as a good paper, said McInnis.

 McInnis also recommended newspapers learn the nature of their clients’ businesses in order to show them that the paper is interested in more than just taking the clients money but in helping the client produce the best ad and get the best return.