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Most likely, you'll want to include artwork in the ad having something to do with the products or services the business sells. Your newspaper may subscribe to art services available on CD's or over the Web containing general artwork of almost anything, but see if you can get your hands on artwork of the actual products from the business directly.

Almost all businesses have, at the very least, catalogs from which they order their products. Many manufacturers provide their distributors glossy product shots from the manufacturers or CD's containing high-resolution images (they're both the best) or finished ad slicks with pictures in them made just for this purpose. Some manufacturers may have Web sites containing special download areas containing high-resolution graphics that you can use.

Don't confuse this with using images being displayed on Web pages, which almost always have too low a resolution to be useful in an ad. An image on a Web page has less than half of the resolution needed by a typical newspaper. For example, a computer monitor only needs an image resolution of 72 pixels per inch to look right, while newsprint needs 170 pixels per inch for good reproduction. Magazines need almost twice that. This means any image you pull off a Web page needs to be twice as big as the size it will end up being in the print ad. Good luck finding images that big.

Of course, if the prospect has enough potential, you may want to go out yourself with a digital camera and shoot some products yourself. I even know more than a few newspapers who are willing to lend out one of their photographers to take pictures for a spec ad at no charge. You might want to ask your manager about that.

Once you've asked all the questions and secured the correct artwork, tell the advertiser you'll be back with an ad in a few days and that if he likes it, maybe he can run it and if not, that's fine as well.

Then return to the office at the end of the day and start working on the spec ad. Instead of just giving all the information you gathered to an artist and making them deal with it, you should consolidate the information into an ad strategy and sketch out a rough layout. Since it's not a live ad and since you're hoping that the artist who works on the spec ad will come up with some good design ideas, it doesn't have to be as specific as a live ad you'd send through to production to go into the newspaper.

So let's talk about how to turn all this information into an ad strategy your artists can work with most effectively. The first thing you'll need to think about is how big a spec ad to create.

Next: Ad size