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A daily newspaper, of course, is published daily, although some don't publish on Sundays or Saturdays.

One advantage to a daily newspaper is that advertisers can run any day of the week they want. This is important if the advertiser wants to be in the newspaper on the day people are most likely to buy their product or service.

For example, major department stores can run towards the end of the week and on Saturday to reach the people who are about to do their weekend shopping.

Back when I worked for a large daily newspaper selling advertising for the big banks in Manhattan, they would choose to run on Mondays and Tuesdays. I always assumed they ran at that time because they were afraid of being lost in a huge end-of-the-week newspaper. When I finally asked, it turned out that they ran early in the week simply because they were closed on the weekend. They found it more productive to catch the readers while there was actually someone at the branch to handle the response.

Another advantage of a daily newspaper is that an advertiser can run as often during the week as he wishes. For example, a funeral home director approached me once after an advertising effectiveness seminar I conducted sponsored by one of my client newspapers. He asked me how often he should be advertising, and I explained that it should be based on how long it takes people to come in and out of the market. His case is unusual since there's not a lot of waiting time between needing a funeral home and hiring one, so we suggested running daily, which worked well for him.

Many dailies also have some of the highest paid circulation in their area and can be one of the most affordable places in which to advertise on a cost-per-paper basis. Because of their high circulation, their rates may seem high, but as with printing anything in large quantities, the per-copy cost of printing goes way down. That's why many agencies try to figure out this per-copy price to compare different products.

The traditional way to compare the cost of an ad with the circulation is to look at the cost for each thousand copies or cost per thousand or CPM.

So let's say a full page in your newspaper costs $3,000 (I know that's really low for some publications and high for others). If the newspaper has a circulation of 30,000, then the cost of running that ad per thousand copies could be calculated by dividing the price of the ad, $3,000, by the number of thousands of copies the ad will appear in, or 30. Remember not to divide by 30,000, just 30, since you're looking for the cost of 1000 papers, not one paper. Just remember to knock off three zeros from whatever your circulation is. So $3,000 divided by 30 is $100. This means that for every thousand newspapers in which their full page ad appears, it costs the advertiser $100. In other words, it has a CPM of $100. The price of the ad is still $3,000.

The cost per thousand equation is really meant as a way to standardize and compare costs of different media, but by no means is it a reflection of the effectiveness or value you're getting with a certain publication. The quality of the editorial and demographics as well as the reliability of the delivery method, for example, are major criteria that aren't reflected in a CPM figure.

Often the lower the circulation of a product is, the more targeted and therefore more valuable the reader is, which usually means the publication can charge a higher rate resulting in a higher CPM. So lower CPM's certainly doesn't mean better value, but it is a factor that some prospective advertisers and ad agencies look at, especially when considering running preprinted pieces inserted into your publications, known as preprints or free standing inserts (FSI's).

Another advantage of a daily newspaper is that it reaches a great cross section of the population, including both higher- and lower-income readers. While dailies reach just about every demographic an advertiser wants, they also tend to skew upscale, since people who pick up their newspaper like to read and therefore are typically better educated and, as a result, tend to have higher incomes.

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