The New Advertiser Form
So, you've gone out into your territory and convinced a business to advertise with your paper. If the business is new to the area, or if he's just never advertised before with your paper, you'll need to set him up as a new account before any ads can run. Some of the things that need to be done include knowing how to get a new account into the reservation and billing system, preparing an advertising contract, handling cash and checks, helping an account apply for credit, and dealing with advertising agencies.

Although your newspaper's forms may differ slightly from the ones we'll discuss together, it'll give you a good idea of the things you need to think about. One of the first things you're likely to fill out is a New Advertiser Form, so check out the sample form. This contains all the information necessary to set up a new advertiser in your newspaper's computer system. An advertiser is considered new when there is no billing information set up in the system.

As in our sample, your newspapers New Advertiser Form will ask you some of the same things that we discussed during the section on filling out the Ad Reservation Form. Information about the advertiser such as the billing name of the business, the name it does business as (also called DBA), address, telephone number, any agency information if the account is currently using one and your territory number. Your form may also ask for you to categorize the account either by describing what he sells, or by using a code sheet that will attach a number or code to different categories of products. This will help production identify the ad later, as well as help if your newspaper wants to send a targeted promotional piece to a certain type of business for a special section.

You'll need to fill in the date that your account wants to run and the deadline date for reserving that space. For example, if they want to run an ad two weeks from now, the deadline date for reserving that space would probably be a week and a half from now. There could also be an area for contract information specific to the section or edition of the paper he wants the ad to run in. This helps the billing people charge the account using the right rate structure. The form may ask you to indicate whether or not the account has signed a contract. As we discussed in the section concerning using the rate card, contracts are used by most papers to encourage advertisers to run frequently. When an advertiser signs a contract, he is agreeing to run an ad a certain number of times over the course of the designated time period.

Sample New Account Form