Disguise Your Ad As An Editorial,
And See Your Response Rates
Shoot Through The Roof!

f you are looking for a way to revitalise an offline ad you are running, or just want to start off with a winning ad, here's a great tip...

Creating an ad in an 'editorial' format, has been proven to out pull conventional looking ads time and time again. In the advertising world this method of advertising is called an 'advertorial'. What Is An 'Advertorial'? An advertorial is an ad that to all intense and purposes, is disguised to look like a normal article in a	Running your ad in an editorial style, will often increase readership
magazine or newspaper. The idea being that readers are much more likely to read an article than they are an ad. This increased readership will obviously help to increase the overall effectiveness and profitability of the ad.

To make an advertorial work, the advertiser will do everything they can to make their ad look just like the other articles in the newspaper/magazine. Here are the main things you should concentrate on:

Use The Same Font As The Publication
You Are Advertising In

To make your ad blend in with the rest of the publication you should use the same font type and size, so that it's hard for the reader to spot the difference. Pay attention to the line height of the font as well. Try typing out one of the paragraphs from an issue of the publication and see if your paragraph looks Identical to theirs. This goes for headlines and sub headlines too. If the publication uses a different colour for their headlines, so should you.

1, 2 Or 3 Columns?

You should also pay attention to the number of columns used in the rest of the publication. If the publication splits the text up into 2 columns, your ad should be split into 2 columns. If they use 3, so should you etc.

Drop Capitals

A large majority of offline publications use a drop capital in their articles. Try to match the style of their drop capitals exactly. For example if their drop capitals drop down over 5 lines of text, so should the one in your advertorial.

Change The Style Of Your Advertorial To
Match Each Publication You Advertise In

If you are running the same ad in different publications, you should take the time to create a different style ad for each publication you advertise in. The style of each publication will vary from one to the next, so it's important that you put the extra effort in to make your ads blend in effectively.

Hold Back The Hype!

A lot of advertisers go over board on the hype and end up turning the reader off. Too much hype will soon set the alarms bells off in the readers head, and the cover of your advertorial will soon be blown. Remember, you are trying to emulate the articles in the rest of the publication, and they are not usually hype driven.

The best advertorials will often start off with some kind of story, just like the other content in the publications.

You Should Expect Some Restrictions

In most publications the editors will not allow your ad to look exactly like their own articles in every single way. This will usually require that your ad is clearly marked to show that it is in fact an ad and not a real article.

The common practice is to ask you to place a headline above your ad that says 'Advertisement' or something like that. This is done so that their readers can't accuse the editor of trying to dupe them.

Tests have shown that even after adding the 'advertisement' notice, it doesn't effect the response rates of the ad very much. It seems that the layout and style of the ad is enough to fool most people into reading it.

Also, type the word out in capitals like this: ADVERTISEMENT. Our eyes find it easier to read letters in lower case, because we can quickly identify the different heights of the letters. If you look at the 'advertisement' in capitals, all the letters are the same height, which does make the word harder to read if you are skimming the page.

To Sum Up...

Even if you are running a half or even quarter page ad, you should still give the advertorial method a try. If you get an advertorial ad working for you, you could also try running an additional conventional looking ad in a different part of the same newspaper/magazine. You should obviously use some sort of tracking method to test the response for each ad.

Your first thoughts might be that the same customers will respond to both ads. However, I've read that some advertisers have reported that as little as 10% of people respond to both ads. This seems to show that some people respond more to advertorials, while others are hooked by the more conventional looking ads.

If you find that your advertising options are limited, because there aren't enough good quality publications relating to your niche, this doubling up technique of running two different style ads in the same publication could pay dividends for you.

Final note: Like every marketing and copywriting tip I give you, you should take nothing for granted. You should always conduct tests to see what works for your product, in your market. Results will vary, but 'advertorials' definitely do work.

Some Quick Homework For You...

Now that you know all about 'advertorials', go and see how many advertisers are using this technique. Grab a few of your favourite newspapers and magazines and flick through them, to see what you find.

You'll be able to see the exact techniques I've just described at work. You might find the odd ad that has used all the techniques I've told you about. Most of them use some of the methods, but not all. The really good ones will be very hard to spot, as they blend in 'almost' seamlessly with the normal content of the publication.

It's a very powerful and effective way to advertise, albeit a little sneaky.

I hope you find this useful,

Jason Lewis
Editor - 'Business Brainwaves' Newsletter