The complaints have been coming for a while. But this one was different. Sent last Sunday in an e-mail and signed by Oscar Strauss Filho, the message summarized the irritation of various readers: “I got up and waited for my newspaper to arrive. I picked up my copy, took it to my reading chair, opened it up and crumpled up that awful half-page ad. Unfortunately, it included page A15, and today I will not read the column by Mr. Josias de Souza.”
The reader was referring to Folha’s Sunday edition, which comes with the front page partially covered by a half page of colorful paper with an ad for a new line of dog food.
This type of advertising is not exclusive to Folha. Almost all newspapers have used it for quite a while. While bothered, readers seem to be accustomed and there are few complaints when it is possible to throw away the ad. But, when the penultimate page of the section brings news stories or a column, as occurred last Sunday and on various other occasions, readers get irritated. They don’t like it when they discard a page with journalistic information but, at the same time, don’t manage to read it easily because they don’t know it is there. “It sure is clumsy to leaf through the newspaper with that first half page,” the reader explained.
Before giving my opinion on the matter, I will pose some questions that I consider important for reflection. Ads are income. Newspapers have two main sources of income: the sale of copies (at newsstands or by subscription) and ads (sale of advertising and classifieds). These prescriptions are equivalent. If there were no ads, the price of a newspaper would be absurd.
There is huge competition among diverse media for advertising money, and newspapers have been losing ground. They used to have a 28hare of the advertising pie (in 1995). Last year, the percentage fell to 18.6%, while advertising money continues to run to television, which concentrates 60.4%. The rest of the pie is divided among magazines, radio and other media. The source is the Inter-Media Project (www.projetointermeios.com.br).
Therefore, newspapers must get moving. They must offer efficiency (in sales) and creativity to their advertisers. Ads are information. An Ipsos-Marplan survey (www.anj.org.br) ordered by 16 newspapers, Folha among them, showed that the rate of reading ads and classifieds is (74%), losing out only to the front page (86%) and local city news (85%). Carried out in July 2003 with 960 people in 11 cities who have read newspapers over the past three months, the survey showed that newspapers are used more than other media in purchase decisions because they allow comparison of prices and characteristics of products, mainly retail.
It makes sense, therefore, that advertisers for products for pets or cell phones seek newspapers and that newspapers redouble efforts to please them.
What about readers? They don’t reject innovations or creative ads. What bothers them is anything that makes it hard to read the newspaper. In these cases, they complain, and for good reason. The newspaper must use good sense at these times to reconcile its interests with those of advertisers and, mainly, those of its readers.
The superintendent at Folha, Antonio Manuel Teixeira Mendes, explained that on various occasions the newspaper rejected the publication of ads that would compromise its graphic project or bother readers.
As for the ad over the front page, Suzana Singer, managing editor for editions at Folha, explained that “there is an effort on the business side, at the request of the editorial side, to sell all the pages that are part of the outside page.” That was what happened with yesterday’s edition, which carried ads for cell phones and DVDs.
Teixeira Mendes confirmed this orientation in the newsroom: “The business side has a policy to try to put ads on the outside page and the back side and insides of that page, thereby avoiding problems. Unfortunately, that was not possible last Sunday. There is worry about filling the back side of that page with an ad.”
What can be deduced from these explanations is that the newspaper should continue to accept ads that partially cover its front page. And our reader, I hope, will keep reading Josias de Souza’s column.
INTERVIEW: The rational characteristic
Geraldo Leite is an advertiser and coordinator of the marketing group at the National Newspaper Association.
Ombudsman – Some readers complain about the newspaper when an advertisement is put over the front page. Are they right?
Geraldo Leite – When a type of advertising format upsets reading in an exaggerated way, I believe that readers are right. On the other hand, I understand that one of the functions of a newspaper, along with informing, is to entertain. Even though a newspaper is a medium that is characteristically informative, people relate to it in various ways. There are people who buy the newspaper only to know the latest news, there are people who buy it to know about the latest attractions at the movie theater or to play the crossword puzzles. There is a certain rational characteristic that I consider fitting.
Ombudsman – Complaints are greater when the outside page contains a news story, which practically prevents it from being thrown away.
Leite – When the ad page repeats the newspaper’s name and advertising, there is no problem, since you can take it out and the rest works normally. When it interferes with reading in the sense that you do not manage to read the newspaper like before, there is a problem. To judge in a more exact way, the right thing would be to have a survey of readers to know what bothers them.
Ombudsman – If the outside page is easily discarded, doesn’t the ad lose its effectiveness?
Leite – No, because the objective at that moment is to reach people with a certain type of information. You do not need to reach them so that people remember the ad forever. The role is to reach people with a certain message. If it touched them and was efficient, the role was fulfilled. It is not true that once thrown away it no longer works.
Translation by John Wright
