If a bond house were to advertise in periodical mediums, and were also to send you a circular, the circular might influence you favorably, even if you had never heard of the advertiser before, because the advertisements in your favorite magazine and news paper would give to the circular a prestige that it could not have if it stood alone.
5. Factors in prestige.—The prestige of direct me diums and of signs cannot be measured by the appli cation of any formula. Each advertiser must meas ure it by a study of local sentiment, by a study of his own past experiences and the experiences of others, and by a wise exercise of his own judgment. There is no formula, either, for weighing the prestige of periodicals; individual judgment here, as in the case of the two other kinds of mediums, must be largely relied on. Yet, in the case of periodicals there are certain tangible factors to be used in the weighing process which are usually absent in measuring the prestige of direct mediums and signs.
Prestige is the result of character. A man's repu tation is the world's estimate of his character, and reputation is based on habits. The same thing is true of a periodical. The advertiser can judge its pres tige by considering its habits. These "habits" are usually termed policies, and they have to do with three different phases of the management of a publi cation: 1. The policies of the editorial department 2. The policies of the circulation department 3. The policies of the advertising department.
6. Editorial policy.—The policies of the editorial department of any medium have much to do with measuring the degree to which advertisements appear ing in that medium will influence its readers. Edi torial policy largely determines the reader's attitude toward everything in the periodical. Someone has said : "The mission of an advertisement is threefold —to be seen, to be remembered and to be believed, and the greatest of these is to be believed." Unless a reader believes what he sees in the news columns he can scarcely be expected to have much faith in the advertisements. Accuracy of statement, a record for conservative under-statement rather than habitual publication of mere rumors, and a proved desire to play fair with the public, for a publication a body of readers who believe in it and in what it says. Such a publication has prestige of the first rank. The confidence bred by an editorial policy founded on a real affection for the truth is not confined to the news and editorial departments; it works for every adver tiser who uses such a medium. The reader who be lieves in his favorite magazine or newspaper is very likely to believe in the advertisements that appear in it.
Editorial policy also helps the advertiser to de termine what kind of people read a publication, as well as the length of time that the average reader may be expected to give to its perusal.
7. Circulation Audit Bureau of Cir culations asks some pertinent questions in regard to how circulation is obtained, in an effort to find out what prestige the publication has in the minds of its readers. The first general question is: Have the readers all purchased the publication? Publications are asked to report the number of free copies circu lated as well as the number of paid copies. They are asked to report the number of copies sold in bulk as well as those sold to individual subscribers. Pub lishers are asked how long subscribers are carried in arrears, and what proportion of their subscribers are in arrears.
In the case of a subscription publication the per centage of annual renewals is a guide to the number of people who consider the publication necessary. Voluntary renewals of subscriptions are valuable in dications of prestige.
Newspapers are also asked to divide their circula tion by editions, stating the hour each edition is pub lished. Some advertisers believe that the time of day when a reader receives a publication is a measure of the degree of thoroness with which it is read. If a medium is only hastily perused, the reader's attention is not likely to be held very long by the advertise ments appearing in it.
8. Morning and evening and evening papers are frequently in competition, and their publishers set up competing claims of superior ity for their publications as advertising mediums. Some morning papers see no good in evening papers, and some evening papers see no good in morning papers. Each kind of publication has its partisans among advertisers. The controversy leads into a dis cussion of the habits of people in different localities —what proportion of the morning papers are read by men on their way to work and are little seen by women in the home, what proportion of the popula tion spends its evenings at places of amusement in stead of quietly at home in the company of the even ing newspaper, and a variety of similar considera tions. The fact seems to be that neither morning nor evening papers, as a class, can claim superiority. Both have been proved to be good advertising me diums. In some communities, it is true, an evening paper is the recognized leader, while in others a morn ing paper leads as the better medium; but, where this is the case, the superiority seldom results from the fact that the leader is an evening or a morning paper—usually it is due to other elements of pres tige entirely independent of the time when the paper is issued.