Our Basic Newspaper Advertising Sales Course

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© 2015 Robert McInnis Consulting

Ad Layout: Credits and Adjustment

This is probably as good a time as any to talk about credits. When an ad does appear incorrectly in a newspaper, sometimes the advertiser is due a credit.

 

When, and how much, is up to each individual newspaper, so always check with your manager. Most times, it's judged on a case by case basis, however, here are some general guidelines.

 

The goal is to try to never let go of the revenue that you've already generated.

 

Therefore, if there's a mistake in the ad that's the fault of the newspaper and some sort of an adjustment is appropriate, don't tell the advertiser they don't have to pay the full amount of the ad.

 

A better alternative would be to give the advertiser credit toward the next ad they run (with management approval) or, in extreme cases, run the ad correctly a second time and still bill them for the first one.

 

The reasoning behind this is that rerunning the ad correctly is much cheaper for the newspaper than refunding any of the money the advertiser originally paid for the ad.

 

In the case of a $500 ad, for example, the newspaper could either return the advertiser's $500 or run the ad again correctly, costing the newspaper perhaps $125 in paper and ink. By rerunning the ad correctly, you've still hung on to most of the revenue. So always rerun instead of refunding.

 

For a small error, the same idea applies--run it again correctly at a discount instead of crediting part of the cost of the previous ad.

 

What kind of error deserves an adjustment? Again, it's going to depend on your newspaper's policy, but usually if the error is so large that it creates no value (or even causes problems, as was the case in the ad for spider vein transplants, which he said embarrassed him in front of his colleagues), a full adjustment in the form of an ad rerun correctly is in order.

 

A full rerun would also be appropriate in ads where major elements are missing or wrong such as the company name, phone number, address, or prices. More minor errors such as one price out of 10 being wrong or something not being centered properly may be handled in a couple of ways.

 

While some newspapers will automatically rerun an ad like this just to keep their advertiser happy, other newspapers will figure that the advertiser got partial value from the ad and will only offer a partial adjustment, usually in the form of a minor discount towards rerunning the ad.

 

In fact most rate cards will include a legal disclaimer including a line that says that errors in ads will only be adjusted proportionate to the size of the error relative to the entire ad size. So if an incorrect phone number only takes up one-twentieth of the ad, then the newspaper reserves the right to adjust the cost of one-twentieth of the ad.

 

As you can imagine, this second scenario is not always well received by the advertiser, but protects the newspaper in case an advertiser is trying to take advantage of a minor error.

 

Next: More on adjustments