Print Takes A Page From Digital
March 16th, 2010
When it comes to online display advertising, we definitely have come a long way since the 1980′s when Prodigy, a company owned by IBM ran the first banner advertisement to promote Sears products. Since then, we have launch and evolved units from generic flash banners to the hated floating ads to the more common expandable ad. As the web matured it was print and newspaper that chose to stay with what felt comfortable, instead of pushing the envelope.
Eventually, brands saw better opportunities to break through the clutter and engage consumers online, slowly stealing media dollars from traditional mediums.
Well it seems one iconic newspaper took a page out of the online book. This past Friday for the release Alice in Wonderland, LA Times ran an ad that took over their front page in vivid color, blocking most of the text.
Top LA Times editor Russ Stanton and some of his deputies, did not run this ad without pressure from the higher ups who were apparently opposed.
“People are worried about what it does with the brand, the paper’s name,” one reporter, who wishes to remain anonymous, was reported as saying. “On the other hand, it’s money that we badly need.”
There is no doubt dollars came down to the final decision to give the green light. To run a homepage take over on Yahoo.com is close to a million dollars, I can only imagine how much this ad cost. Seeing how Alice grossed $116 million its first week, it probably doesn’t matter.
AD:60 would like to give to three fist pumps for the LA Times pushing the newspaper to the next level.