Print advertisement examples: six placements, the copy filled in for each, and the response device that tells you which one worked

A print advertisement is bought by placement, and the placement settles almost everything about the copy before you write a word. A classified line ad has about twenty words and no picture. A magazine full page has one image and a headline. An insert can carry a coupon, and a mailed pack can carry a reply card. The examples below are grouped that way rather than by industry, because an advertiser who copies the layout of a full page into a quarter page produces an unreadable quarter page. Every example ends with a response device, since print without one leaves you guessing which placement produced the calls.

The six placements, side by side

Placement	Words that fit	Strongest at	How the reply gets counted
Classified line ad	15 to 30	Readers already looking for the category	A dedicated phone number
Local newspaper quarter page	40 to 70	One service, one area, one offer	A printed code at the till or on the booking
Consumer magazine full page	15 to 40	Recognition and one strong image	A vanity web address unique to the title
Trade magazine half page	80 to 150	A technical claim a buyer can check	A landing page with a tracked path
Insert or door drop leaflet	100 to 250 across two sides	An offer with a deadline	A tear off coupon or a one use code
Direct mail pack	300 to 700 in a letter	A considered purchase, to a selected list	A reply card, or a personal code per address

Example one: classified line ad

No image, no layout, and every word costs money. Lead with the category word a reader is scanning for, then the qualifier that rules you in or out, then the number.

PLUMBING AND HEATING, [Town] and surrounding villages. Boiler repairs, leaks, bathrooms. [Number] years, fully insured, fixed quotes before work starts. Call [dedicated number].

The dedicated number is the tracking. A second line rented from the same provider, pointed at the same handset, tells you how many calls came from this title and nowhere else.

Example two: local newspaper quarter page

A quarter page is read at arm's length in a hurry. One message, big type, and white space you are tempted to fill.

• Headline: [Service] in [Town], booked this week
• Three lines of detail: Fixed quote before any work. No call out fee. [Number] reviews from [Town] customers.
• Image: One photograph of your own finished work or your own team, never a stock image of a model in a call centre
• Action, in the largest type on the page: Call [number] or visit [short web address]
• Reason to act now: One true one, such as a season, a pre season service window or an actual closing date
• Response device: Quote [CODE] when you call, and ten dollars off the first visit

Example three: consumer magazine full page

A full page competes with editorial photography, so the image is the advertisement and the words label it. Fifteen to forty words is the whole brief.

• Image: The product in use, filling the page, shot the way the reader would encounter it
• Headline, six to ten words: [The one claim, stated as a fact rather than an adjective]
• Supporting line: [What it is, who it is for, and the price or the range]
• Proof line: [A checkable fact: a standard met, a test result, a number of years, a named certification]
• Action: [brand].com/[title name], which is both the action and the measurement

The per title web address is worth the five minutes it takes to set up. Three magazines pointing at three addresses give you three numbers at the end of the quarter instead of one guess.

Example four: trade magazine half page

A trade reader is a buyer at work, so this is the one print placement where a longer and more technical advertisement outperforms a clever one.

• Headline: [Specific outcome] for [job title] in [sector]
• Opening line: [The problem, in the words the trade uses for it]
• Body, four short bullets: what it does, the specification that matters, what it costs or the basis of pricing, and the lead time
• Proof: [A named standard, an approval, an installation count, a named reference customer who has agreed to be named]
• Action: Download the specification sheet at [brand].com/[sector], or call [name] on [number]

Keep the landing path in the advertisement itself rather than sending readers to the home page. The path is the only record you will have that the issue was read.

Example five: insert or door drop leaflet

Two sides, one offer, and a deadline the print date sets for you. Front side sells, back side proves and instructs.

• Front headline: [Offer] in [Area], until [date]
• Front subhead: [What you get, in one sentence including the terms that matter]
• Front image: The work, the shop front or the product, photographed locally
• Back: Three short proof points, the service list, the opening hours, a small map, and the conditions in readable type
• Response device: A tear off coupon carrying [CODE], the end date and the address, so a redeemed coupon is a counted response
• Print note: Keep the coupon away from the fold, because a coupon printed across a fold gets torn in half

Example six: direct mail pack

A mailed pack costs more per household than everything above and reaches a list you chose, which is why it can afford a letter.

• Outer envelope: One line that earns the opening, or a plain envelope with a real stamp for a business list
• Letter, 300 to 700 words: Why this reader specifically, the offer, three proof points, what to do, and a deadline. Signed by a named person
• One insert: The specification, the menu, the price list or the before and after photographs
• Reply device: A pre addressed reply card, a personal code printed per address, or a QR code carrying a tracked path with the campaign name in it
• Measurement: Responses divided by pieces mailed, and cost per response next to the same figure from your other channels

The five response devices, and when each one fits

Device	Best placement	What it costs to run
Dedicated phone number	Classified, quarter page	A few dollars a month per number
Printed code	Quarter page, insert	Nothing, as long as staff are told to ask for it
Vanity address per title	Magazine full page	One redirect per title
QR code to a tracked path	Trade, direct mail, insert	Nothing, and it needs a page that works on a phone
Reply card or coupon	Direct mail, insert	Print and postage, and somebody to process them

The production line to agree before the deadline

Publications take artwork to a specification and a date, and a missed date means paying for a space that ran empty. Ask the title for its spec sheet and settle six things: the trim size, the bleed, the safe area, the resolution, the colour space and the file format. In the United States bleed is usually quoted as 0.125 inch, images are supplied at 300 dots per inch at final size, and process colour work is supplied as CMYK rather than RGB. The full specification conversation, including paper and finishing, is set out in marketing material printing, and the layout rules for a large format piece are in brand advertising posters.

Buying the space

Rate cards are a starting position. Series bookings, late availability and remnant space all move the number, position premiums are charged for the front half and the right hand page, and a cancellation deadline sits weeks before the issue date. Decide in advance how many insertions you are buying, because one insertion in four titles teaches you less than four insertions in one. Where a media owner or an intermediary sits between you and the publication, the terms that decide whose money is whose are covered in how to buy transparency terms from a media buying agency. For the copy itself across digital formats as well as print, there are worked samples in marketing advertisement samples.

What print advertisers ask

Does print advertising still work?

It works where the reader and the placement match: trade titles read by buyers at work, local papers in areas with a strong local readership, and mailed packs to a selected list. It works badly as general awareness spending with no response device, which is the version people remember as not working.

How many words should a print advertisement have?

As many as the placement allows and the reader's situation justifies. Twenty for a classified, forty for a page a reader glances at, a hundred and fifty for a trade buyer comparing specifications. The word count is a property of the placement, not of your enthusiasm.

How do I know whether it worked?

Give every placement its own response device from the table above, record responses against pieces or insertions, and compare cost per response with your other channels. Ask new customers where they heard of you as a second reading, since some responses arrive through a route you never tracked.

What should I pay?

Ask three titles for the rate card plus their current availability, and ask what a four insertion series costs against a single one. Then work backwards: how many customers the space has to produce at your average order value to pay for itself. If that number looks implausible for the readership, the placement is wrong before the copy is.

Can I reuse the same artwork across placements?

Reuse the image, the proof point and the offer. Rebuild the layout and the word count per placement. The same file scaled from a full page into a quarter page produces type nobody can read, which is the most common fault in local print.

Do I need a designer?

For a classified, no. For anything with an image and a headline, a designer who has supplied artwork to publications before is worth the fee, mostly because they know the spec sheet and the deadline culture.

The page a print reader lands on after asking somebody else

Print advertising reaches somebody holding a magazine. A growing share of the same buyers reach for an assistant instead, ask which supplier or product to choose, and take the two or three that come back named with a sentence of description each. Those answers are written from what has been published about each company, so a well made advertisement never enters them. It is worth reading the current answer in your own category, with your name left out of the question so the reply arrives clean. AI Knows Us asks those buying questions across the main assistants and records who gets named and which sources the answers were built from.