Determining Ad Size Introduction Is smaller better? Bad approaches ----How much you got? ----Double divided by 2 ----Pick a size, any size ----Which looks better? The traditional approach ----Divide by 52 ----Why it rarely works Our approach ----What size do you need? ----What size can you run? Take our ad effectiveness course. Learn what you need to know to get a great response the first time you run. Just $59 • Get more readers seeing your ad • Get more readers reading your ad • Get more readers responding

Here are a few other questionable approaches to determining ad size.

Double divided by two
Some advertising representatives believe that no matter what size they recommend to an advertiser, they'll always shrink it down. An old trick that advertising salespeople use to get around this is to make the spec ad larger than what they want the final ad to be.

So, if a less than ethical advertising representative would like you to buy a 2 column x 5 inch ad, he'll bring in a 3 col x 8 inch ad spec ad, assuming that you'll ask for it to be shrunk down.

Pick a size, any size
An even worse approach to ad size is when the salesperson says, "I have no idea what size the advertiser should run, so let's make up a bunch of ads of various sizes and hopefully he'll pick one in the middle somewhere."

Artists don't like this approach since it dramatically increases their workload. Advertisers don't like it because the salesperson can't recommend a specific ad size.

Which looks better?
When an advertiser requests to see a spec ad of a size that his advertising representative feels is too small, occasionally the ad rep does something even more devious.

The ad rep asks an artist to create a poorly designed spec ad the size that the customer has requested, and a great one that's bigger, hoping the prospective advertiser will run the larger size. Artists don't like this approach much either, since their training is usually in good design, not bad.

I should point out that there is only a small minority of the ad reps who actually use any of these techniques anymore. The better advertising representatives, certainly the ones we've worked with, understand that there is a perfect size for every advertiser.

Now that we've talked about the more manipulative ways of recommending an ad size, let's talk about how most advertising representatives are taught to approach the ad size issue, as well as our own approach that we think is better.

Next: The traditional approach

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