After nine years, the Hoosier State Press Association and Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association have mutually agreed to end its advertising program partnership.
HSPA will not only sell, but process, the display advertising placements of what was branded as Midwest Advertising Placements (MAP) in-house. We hope Indiana newspapers will find us more responsive to any questions that may pop up concerning a placement with Hoosiers answering your calls and emails.
We also hope publishers and ad directors remember that HSPA is a resource to help with an advertising client who has needs that go beyond the circulation area of your particular newspaper. If that local bank has branches in multiple counties or in several states, we can help your ad director serve that bank so it doesn’t have to reach out to an advertising agency to get the ad published.
We hope Indiana newspapers will find us more responsive to any questions that may pop up concerning a placement with Hoosiers answering your calls and emails.
While we drop the MAP moniker to our program, it doesn’t change who is responsible for paying you for those ad placements. If you have any questions about this change in our advertising placement service, reach out to Pam or I at plego@hspa.com or skey@hspa.com.
With the launch of MAP in 2010, HSPA entered into a partnership with PNMA, parent of MANSI (Mid-Atlantic Newspaper Advertising Services, Inc.). MANSI served as MAP’s processing center for advertising sold by HSPA Advertising Director Pam Lego or received directly from other press associations or advertising agencies.
The intent of MAP was to establish an advocate for the value of print advertising who could serve advertising agencies and clients interested in getting their message to consumers in the most effective way possible.
Lego has traveled the length and breadth of the state visiting potential clients and even made trips out-of-state to serve specific clients who were interested in Indiana newspapers as an advertising medium.
Her efforts on average put $1 million in advertising in newspapers on a yearly basis. This is revenue that didn’t require any member newspaper to devote staff time to successfully sell.
While needing to cover costs, HSPA never looked at the placement service as a revenue source – our priority has been to serve our members and the advertising client. For that reason, we offer the one-call, one-order, one-bill service to advertisers for free. It’s also why we insist on the best rates our members can offer so that the advertiser is comfortable that we’re serving his or her needs.
To cover our administrative costs, our member newspapers agreed from the inception to allow us to hold back five (5) percent of the ad cost charged by the newspaper. This system allows us to give the advertiser the best rate possible with no incentive for the advertiser to try and beat the deal by using an advertising agency with its general fifteen (15) percent markup.
We don’t push other media options onto the advertiser like an agency, so giving us your best rates are in our members’ best long-term interests.
There have been the occasional glitches – the newspaper sales rep who reaches out to a client to offer an even better deal than what we quoted, which at worst has led to a cancelled order for all Indiana newspapers in the proposed buy or at best guaranteed that the rep’s newspaper would receive less revenue while the sale rep adds the diminished sale to his/her monthly sales sheet.
For accounting purposes, you may want to note that MAP becomes the Hoosier State Press Association (HSPA), but in reality it’s always been the one and the same.
