Looks like ads may be coming to the front page of the Los Angeles Times, L.A. Observed says. In a memo to the staff, publisher David Hiller said the paper had “one of the worst quarters ever experienced,” and that the newspaper faces more competition for advertisers and is looking at “expanding the types and positioning of advertising.”

Here’s what Hiller said about the ads:

There has been a lot of focus on such ads, and I know there a real mix of views and emotions on this subject, so let me tell you what I think of them:

• Front page ads will raise several million dollars in revenue, and make a meaningful contribution to improving current trends
• We will make sure the revenue is additive, and not just switched from other pages
• They will help pay for the content we create for readers, and for our investment in new growth opportunities
• They are common at reputable papers across the U.S. and Europe, including in the Wall Street Journal’s much admired re-design
• Space taken (1 ½” strip) and related design issues can be managed
• We will have standards to ensure the ads look good, not schlocky
• If we communicate well, reader reaction should be OK

Update: As Anonymous points out, the Chicago Tribune reports that it will likely follow suit and that Newsday is considering it as well.

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Today’s Merc’s got one of the larger front-page ads I’ve seen on an American front page that’s not the Wall Street Journal. Even Gannett seems to stick to the relatively unobtrusive full-width strip at the bottom of the page. Update: As Andrew points out in the comments, the Arizona Republic has started the same thing.

Update2: Merc Design Director Michael Tribble weighs in in the comments:

For years, journalists at most American papers have regarded covers as sacred places meant only for editorial coverage. But while our industry faces challenging economic times, we all understand that a transition into different ways of thinking (and different revenue sources) is necessary.

No argument there. At least the ads aren't blinking. Meanwhile, tomorrow's Merc sports cover tries something in a lovely orange:

(Thanks, Josh!)

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Oh, StarTribune.com! Why must you make my eyes bleed?

The Merc’s Michael Bazeley tells us why not only is this a visual disaster, but bad business as well.

Update: Boston.com did it today, as well, Heidi points out. Lovely.

>StarTribune goes over the top [Media Grunt: Michael Bazeley]

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It’s only been on the street a few weeks, but News International’s thelondonpaper has already suffered a serious wound. And it’s self-inflicted. CR Blog reports that on Monday the paper sold a wrapper around the paper that used a fake front page, created by Channel 4’s in-house ad agency, 4creative, to sell the airing of their controversial film “Death of a President.”

4creative’s execution deliberately mimics the poster-style front pages that have become the norm for reporting major events in the press. The media savvy may have instantly made the connection between the front page image and More4’s posters and enjoyed the conceit, but many others would not.

>Breaking News [CR Blog]

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Ever wondered who’s giving advertisers the ideas for some of these wacky ad shapes of late? Answer: We are!

Check out this odd 18-page PDF at the Newspaper Association of America site.

“Adscapes” are the latest look in newspaper advertising. No longer are newspaper ads relegated to squares and rectangles. Today, advertisers can attract attention with a variety of shapes and sizes. Take a look at the latest looks.

Here’s the best one. It’s not even a real page! They just pasted it together — badly — from chunks of other pages!

Cripes. I hope they didn’t pay good money for that genius piece of PR.

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Wisconsin’s Oshkosh Northwestern (Gannett, 21,637) is letting the cat out of the ad stack. (Closer look)

Update: Brian points out the Gannett-owned Louisville Courier-Journal has been doing the same thing.

(Thanks, Donovan!)

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Looks like advertisers are embracing the “Hot L” treatment, if this page from today’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel is any indication.

Update: Jack Shafer writes in Slate today about ads on newspaper front pages and the hue and cry these (and other "imaginative") ads create.

Newspaper companies do experiment with ads, but mostly in their online ventures, which sends the message to advertisers and readers—the boomers-and-older generation still habituated to newspapers—that they've given print up for dead.

None of this is to suggest that the tired newspaper ad template can't sell goods and services. Of course it can. Indeed, one of the main reasons people read newspapers is to consume classified, real estate, and entertainment ads. But ask anybody who has ever tried to place a stimulating advertisement in a newspaper and you'll hear all about antiquated rules about ad location, size, configuration, and taste that are designed to prevent imaginative ads from running. Newspapers are as complacent in today's competitive ad market as they were when they held a near-monopoly over advertising.

>Front Page for Sale: Newspapers go back to the future [Slate]

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The Wall Street Journal today started running that front-page ad they announced in July. Vrooomm!

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Following in the footsteps of the New York Times Mother Ship, The Boston Globe will begin selling advertising on the covers of its Business, Sunday Real Estate, Sports, and Food sections.

Ad space on the Business and Real Estate sections will be available Aug. 6, and soon afterward on the fronts of the other sections, [Globe president and general manager Mary] Jacobus said. "The front page of the Globe is not under consideration," Jacobus said, nor is the cover of the City & Region section.

...

The ads in the Business and Real Estate sections would be three-inch-high strips across the bottom of the page, she said. That would be similar in shape and size to the ads recently launched on the business cover of The New York Times, which, like the Globe, is owned by The New York Times Co. The marketing goal is to provide advertisers with high visibility among readers with high interest in that section's content.

Early results for selling ads on the front page of the Times Business section have been encouraging, Catherine J. Mathis, a Times vice president, said in an e-mail.

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Confirming speculation from this spring, The Wall Street Journal will begin running ads on its front page in September, The New York Times is reporting. It will be a square-shaped ad (they're calling it a "jewel box") that will run in the lower right-hand corner of the page, perhaps much like the tabloid overseas editions do. The ad could bring in more than $75,000 a pop.

At Poynter they are, of course, wringing their hands.

“As a traditionalist, I’m not thrilled by the idea,” said Bob Steele, who specializes in ethics and values at the Poynter Institute, which studies journalism. Front pages, he said, should be reserved for what the collective community considers to be news.

“Gannett has changed this equation considerably in the last few years with section-front and front-page ads, and now the Internet has presented a whole new table top,” he said. “The question becomes, how do newspapers protect their journalistic integrity at the same time they develop new revenue streams?”

The question becomes that? Seems to me that's always been the question. One of them, anyway. “Journalistic integrity” comes from how you conduct yourself journalistically, no? Not what page you put your ads on. I’m no fan of the front-page ad either, but I just don’t think that readers view the front page with the same holy reverence that we do.

Incidentally, as previously documented here and elsewhere, the Journal will redesign and introduce a narrower web width early next year.

>Wall Street Journal to Run Ads on Its Front Page [The New York Times]

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Inspired by artist Laura Fields and critic John Berger, Mark Kingsley has a fascinating meditation (with many examples) over at Speak Up on the “collision” between advertising and news images. It’s a collision exemplified by Page A3 of The New York Times, where there’s usually a fairly in-depth international piece and a photograph. Combine that with the ubiquitous Tiffany’s ad in its traditional upper-right spot, and you get a juxtaposition that often creates an entirely new narrative about society, art, economics, politics and culture.

My early exposure to this “way of seeing” was first viewing the [“Ways of Seeing”] BBC series as a freshman in college, and then as a junior designer in New York. Even though they didn’t speak the language of intertextuality, the art directors above me often would tweak layouts whether one image was “looking” at an image across from it or not. And from that moment on, inspired, I began collecting magazine covers based on their overall narrative effect.

So ever since seeing Child’s Play, I’ve looked at page three of the New York Times differently: always looking for a correspondence between the narratives of news photo and Tiffany ad, a correspondence between text and image, or simply a correspondence of shapes.

>Laura Fields and the Page Three Sutra [Speak Up]

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The Wall Street Journal, working on a Mario Garcia-led “reimagining” (and web-width reduction), is considering putting ads on its front page, The New York Observer reports today (scroll down).

Some news staffers aren’t thrilled:

“We understand this is a for-profit business,” one newsroom staffer said. “But an ad on the front page? That would really piss people off.”

It is worth noting, however, that the international editions of the WSJ already have front-page advertising.

>Off the Record [New York Observer] (via)

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Remember that little problem Quark had with their new logo last fall? They've tried again. The internets are not impressed.

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Here's an, um, interesting series of after-shave ads that apparently ran in a Brazilian newspaper (can't tell which one). The ad agency involved is Giovanni, FCB, a branch of which was responsible for those "flags as infographics" ads you may remember from last year. The ad's tagline, incidentally, is "For the man who dares to take care of himself."

(Thanks, Ben!)

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Speaking of non-traditional ad placement, Steve Dorsey points out that the above "Z-shaped" island ad ran in both Detroit papers and dozens of others last fall.

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Well, this is new. On page A3 Monday, The Kansas City Star put an ad at the top of the page above editorial content. First time I've seen this done in a major daily newspaper, although something you see a lot of on the internets. It will reportedly be nearly a daily occurrence on page 3, 5 or 7.

(Thanks, Joy!)

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You may recall last April when a Spanish telecom company, in order to get a big splash while rolling out a new branding identity, placed some pretty intrusive advertising on the cover of the Spanish sports daily Marca. Now, it's Portugal's turn. On Wednesday, TMN, the country's leading mobile telecommunications company and a subsidiary of Portugal Telecom, introduced a new logo and was apparently able to pony up muitos euros to swath the entire front pages of three of the largest dailies in the country in their signature, er, blue. Or something. Yikes.

Incidentally, two of the newspapers, Jornal de Noticias and Diario de Noticias, are owned by Lusomedia, which was, until last month, owned by Portugal Telecom. (The third, Publico, is owned by Sonae.) And the soccer players on the front of the Jornal de Noticias and Diario de Noticias play for F.C. Porto, whose jerseys bear the logo of, yes, Portugal Telecom, with whom the club just last Friday announced a new 6-year, $25.6 million sponsorship deal. Wow. What's the Portuguese word for "convergence?"

(Thanks, Don!)

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You see Quark's new logo? I'm betting the Scottish Arts Council has.

(via Coudal)

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I don't know why everyone complains about front-page advertising. It can make for such attractive pages! Especially when you sell your soul to a yellow pages company! Yipes. Makes those green pages from earlier this year look almost elegant.

(Meet the Maharashtra Herald of Pune, India. Beloved customer of the Indian Yellow Ink Company.)

(Thanks, Yug!)

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Catching up from vacation here, but the newly Gannettized Detroit Free Press last week began putting a GM ad on the bottom of the front page every day. Well, at least it's not the whole page.

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The Detroit Newspaper Agency's decision to wrap Wednesday's editions of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News in the flag, or, more accurately, a four-page Marshall Field's ad that looked like a flag, has successfully annoyed everybody from designers to copy editors to CJR-types to actual real readers.

There may be a precedent for a capitulation as crassly commercial as this one, but if there is, our minds have mercifully blocked it out. - CJR Daily

Hell, newspapers have just as much right to make money money as anyone else. But, in this instance, a line has definitely been crossed. ... a line in what the local newspapers represent in our community. That's not to say they can't earn it back, but on the heels of the Mitch Al-Bomb scandal and the revolting way that Carole Leigh Hutton handled the results of investigation, your Uncle Grambo would say that hill just got a little bit steeper. - Uncle Grambo, whatevs.org

What galled me about the honor-box photo was that the only thing visible from outside the box was the American-flag design. It's not until you had put in your four bits (or however much that thing costs), your cockles warmed by this wonderful patriotic gesture by the newspaper, that you'd discover you'd been rooked by a farging Marshall Field's ad. - Testy Copy Editors

I know we're desperate for ad revenue, but I don't think these ideas are being very well thought out. It's the typical focus on the short term without worrying about the future. - VisualEditors.com

I see that the Free Press put their profit for selling this wraparound ad before the true meaning of Memorial Day and what it really stands for. I don't think that those who sacrificed their lives for this country ever expected their day of remembrance to be justification for a store to hold a "sale" in their honor. - Free Press reader

Update: Here's an image of the Freep's ad front from E&P. Also, Henry S. Ford, vice president of market development of the Detroit Newspaper Agency, told E&P: “It just seemed like nothing far off field from a gatefold or a wrap.” And in a letter to Romenesko he said, "Initial reader response has been positive." I guess the Freep forgot to publish those letters!

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VisualMente has several posts (1, 2, 3, 4) about some infographic-type images created by Lisbon advertising firm Foote Cone & Belding. It's a campaign for the Portuguese political magazine Grande Reportagem. It turns flags of various countries into infographics by adding a legend. For instance:

United States
Red: In favor of the war in Iraq
White: Against the war in Iraq
Blue: Don't know where Iraq is

Colombia
Red: Exportation of bananas
Blue: Exportation of coffee
Yellow: Exportation of cocaine

You can find the rest here.

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A couple of developments on the intrusive advertising front this week. First, in Monday's Australian, the Sports section was, apparently, wrapped by a four-page advertising section, the cover of which bears a strong resemblance to that day's actual Sports cover. The ad cover's on the left (the little 9-point "ADVERTISING" label on the top of the page is your tipoff; oh, and the HUGE-ASS TRUCK blasting its way through the page). This is the wrapper's centerspread ad they wanted you to see.

Second, and most horrifying, is this page:

In a page that will almost certainly be left out of next year's SND entries, the Spanish sports daily Marca, one of this year's World's Best-Designed Newspapers, on Wednesday actually incorporated the new logo of a telecom company into their main headline.

The blue "M" logo is for Movistar, which is, if I understand some of these Spanish financial articles correctly, the brand under which Telefo�nica Mo�viles is consolidating its operations in 13 Spanish-speaking countries after its acquisition earlier this year of BellSouth�s Latin American cellular operations. The company launched a $100 million ad campaign this week, and it looks like some of that cash bought some prime product placement in the editorial real estate of one of Spain's best-read newspapers. Kinda makes that hubbub over the jokey inclusion of a tiny little NewTek logo in a Dallas Morning News graphic seem a bit small, doesn't it?

Given the current love affair with European newspapers and some of the speechifying about ethics that went on in the DMN case, I'm curious to see the reaction here. Is one of the requirements to be one of the World's Best-Designed some sort of clear separation between advertising and editorial content? If not, should it be?

I'm no prude, here. I don't particularly like front-page ads, but as long as they're clearly identifiable as such, I don't see them as evil incarnate. But if this sort of product-placement advertising starts eroding the integrity of the editorial space, at what point does a publication cease being an actual "newspaper?"

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Apparently, in India, not only can you buy an ad on the front page, you can frame the front page. Including the nameplate!

Shhh! Don't tell Gannett!

*Update: For the curious, at the bottom of the ad it says "To find out, please see back page." On the back page is an ad for the state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, which you can see here.

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Good Lord, that's a huge ad at the bottom of the Wichita Eagle's front page! And on one of the year's biggest news days! That huge, hairy ad is quite a bit bigger than any I think I've ever seen on an American front page. Is this the future of Knight Ridder?

*Update 11/5: Vince Tuss asks in the comments whether this page was perhaps their election extra, and not the main Wednesday AM edition. It appears he's right; this was an extra that hit the streets at 10:30 a.m. The page above was (I believe) posted on the Newseum's main front pages page Wednesday morning which led me to believe it was their main edition (those big ELECTION EXTRA words should have been a tip-off). Now, on their archives of election pages, they have the Eagle's main edition. I suppose there's a philosophical discussion that could be had here about whether the cover of an extra is any different than the "real" front page. (Do readers see it that way? Do they even care about front-page ads?) But, as I noted on the SND blog, Page One ads are not off the table in the redesign discussions at Knight-Ridder's Kansas City Star, so perhaps this is just a portent of things to come.

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A reader tipped me off to this "ad campaign" (an April Fool's joke, I suspect) mentioned in an adcritic.com newsletter. It reimagines four covers from various historical events with the tagline "New York's most colorful newspaper for 200 years."

Here's a Lewis and Clark cover:

I like the deck heds on this one:

Clark loses fight about whose name should be first

Lewis privately confides that Sacagawea is "hot"

Indians not buying Thomas Jefferson as new "great father"

And the others:

Continue reading ""JEFFERSON CAUGHT IN LOVE TRYST! KENNETH STARR ON THE CASE!""

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