When Good Ads Go Bad Introduction What's adjustment worthy? Worst case scenarios Who decides? 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

As pointed out on most rate cards, in the case of really big mistakes the newspaper is not responsible for any lost sales resulting from an error.

So if an ad gets left out of the newspaper and a big sale doesn't get advertised, that doesn't mean the newspaper has to somehow make up your lost sales.

In fact, in this case, you can't even really request a refund or even a rerun, since no ad actually ran.

It wasn't always like that. We know of one newspaper who years earlier had left out a zero on a price for an oriental rug ad, turning a $2,000 price into a $200 price. Back when this happened, the advertiser had to honor the published price and a representative from the newspaper had to stand in the store and pay the difference for every carpet sold.

Things have changed since then, and when a newspaper is faced with this situation now, typically they arrange for some sort of adjustment on the ad and then write a letter to the advertiser acknowledging the newspaper's error, stating the correct price, and apologizing for any inconvenience. Then the advertiser could show the letter to his customers and that would be the end of it.

Next: Who decides?

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