By Pauline Word
Texas Press Messenge

A newspaper advertisement must be a certain column width by a certain number of inches and squared off at the bottom of the page below the editorial copy. Right? Guess again.

A new trend is sprouting up in newspapers across the country that really goes outside the box, way outside the box.

The Newspaper Association of America calls them AdScapes “the latest look in newspaper advertising” and describes them as a way for advertisers to attract attention with a variety of sizes and shapes.

AdScapes are non-modular ads that extend into the editorial space much like a graphic element with text wrapping around the ad. AdScapes are starting to sprout up in Texas newspapers as publishers look for more ways to generate advertising revenue.

Some examples include a Houston Texans ad in the Houston Chronicle last April that has a football player breaking through the copy on a double truck and the text wrapping around all four sides.

Ken Whitfield, vice president of display advertising at the Chronicle, said advertisers love the new ads that are available in any section and any day of the week.

“The art pops off the page and offers a real value with its unique exposure,” Whitfield said.

To coordinate the page, the editorial department is notified only of the ad size and layout, and editors dummy their copy around the space accordingly, Whitfield said.

The Austin American-Statesman ran its first AdScapes this summer with Dillard’s as the test account. This fall the second series featured Chevrolet ads — one ad with trucks stacked down the right side like stair-steps and another with a Texas mountain scene cut-out.

Stephanie Mermis, major accounts director for the Statesman, said the newspaper calls them “out of the box” ads and is using them for a select number of clients. The ads are built in-house and the clients generally are sold into sections where they normally do not advertise, such as Chevy in the A section and Dillard’s in Travel or Sports.

“It’s an additional revenue source because it was taking clients out of their natural habitat,” Mermis said.

When the Statesman started working on its out of the box ads Mermis said all affected departments were brought into the discussions. The layouts are coordinated with the editorial department well in advance so the stories can be adjusted accordingly, she said.

Mermis acknowledged that the editorial copy does wrap around the ad but said there is enough white space between the two elements so a consumer would know the distinction between editorial and advertising.

In other states though that may not be quite the case. The Oshkosh (Wis.) Northwestern and Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal both recently ran page-one strip ads with graphics that extended out into the editorial copy.

It’s too early to tell if consumers are catching on to this new ad style but some editors around the country have not been shy about their feelings.

“I don’t want an advertiser or ad rep telling me how to design my page. That’s like a casino bartender telling me how much I have to wager while playing video poker at the bar,” one disgruntled editor wrote on the Web site NewsDesigner.com.

Another designer wrote “But editorial doesn’t go creeping into ad space? So why is it OK the other way? Yeah, they pay our salaries but we can’t just roll over and play dead.”

To view more examples of AdScapes click here and then click on the box “AdScapes” in the left top corner.