ONE INCH—$5,492 STAMPS A YEAR.
A modest 1-inch magazine advertisement is printed by a company, which reports that its yearly postage account from that cause is $5,132. Adding the approximate postage on the 1,500 letters a month sent to the company, the yearly total of postage created by this inconspicuous concern through the magazine is found to be $5,492.
ONE-HALF INCH—$590 A MONTH.
A half-inch magazine space is used each month by a certain electric manufacturing company in the Middle West, but its postage records show stamp purchases for a single month (November, 1909), resulting from that half-inch advertisement of $590.
| Two quarter-column announcements of a dress fabric, appealing to women, in a single magazine, brought 7,000 replies, involving postage stamps worth | $230.00 |
| Pretty good business getters for the department? These “ads” cost the publishers to mail, at second-class rates | 19.40 |
| Even better, in proportion, was a one-fifth-column appeal to mothers in one issue of the same magazine. It produced postage to the amount of | 240.00 |
| To carry the little advertisement at second-class rates the government charged | 7.76 |
| A single-column magazine “ad” of a Chicago clothing firm, with a number of retail stores over the country, brought 4,000 inquiries which, with the following up, etc., caused postage of | 380.00 |
| That column cost the publisher to mail, at second-class rates | 38.67 |
| The Woman’s Home Companion sent a letter to the advertisers in its November issue, asking for a memorandum of the letter postage on the inquiries from their November advertising and the answers to these inquiries. Seventy-five advertisers reported, with definite figures, an aggregate letter-postage expenditure of | $3,385.90 |
The Woman’s Home Companion paid the government just $583 for carrying that portion of the magazine on which these 75 advertisements were printed.
Any advertising man can point to hundreds of “mail-order firms” like the above. These firms can trace directly to their magazine advertising, every year, purchases of millions of dollars’ worth of the stamps that make big profits for the postoffice.
It is even more surprising to learn the enormous postage bills caused by an entirely different class of magazine advertisers—the “general publicity,” or “national” advertisers—who wish the reader to ask for their fine soaps, or mattresses, or silks, or stationery at his local store. These firms do not depend on direct replies, yet they receive so many that thousands of dollars are spent for stamps per year in scores of cases—even per month in many.
EVEN THE “GENERAL” OR “PUBLICITY” MAGAZINE ADVERTISING CREATES ENORMOUS STAMP SALES.