A house ad is an advertisement used by media companies to promote their own interests when they cannot fill a certain amount of column inches with ads. This can include promoting the ad space itself, the company that owns the store, or other projects. House ads are also common in online advertising.
A house ad is an advertisement placed on some sort of media managed by the company that owns the store. The house ad is a common device for using unsold advertising inventory to promote the company’s interests. A house ad can be for the ad space itself, for the company that owns the store, or for one of their other projects.
In the early 19th century, media companies began to include paid advertising space on their pages, starting with the French newspaper La Presse. Soon, nearly every periodical, from newspapers to magazines to trade journals, began to include advertisements for products or services. Advertising revenue eventually displaced subscription fees for many magazines and newspapers, allowing for dramatic cost reductions for consumers.
Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to fill a certain amount of column inches with ads in the short time available to a newspaper or magazine. Especially when the economy falters and many companies reduce their advertising budgets, magazines and newspapers used to filling a certain amount of pages with ads find themselves completely unable to make their quota. If the situation is bad enough, a magazine will often reduce their total pages, including ad pages, to cut costs. Due to economies of scale in printing, however, this isn’t always economically viable.
In this case, running a house ad or a number of house ads becomes an alternative. Pages that would normally be dedicated to paid advertisements, but which have no taker, are instead used by the magazine itself to promote something in its own best interest. Often this will take the form of an advertisement for the promotional space itself, saying something like “Your advertisement here”, with contact information for the company’s advertising department. In this way, the wasted space is transformed into a place to attract new customers to fill the space in the future.
A company may also run a house ad as a means of promoting the media itself. For example, a magazine that finds itself with additional advertising space might run an ad promoting a two-for-one vacation discount on subscriptions or simply as a reminder for customers to renew. A business could also use the space to promote some sort of competition or sweepstakes, as a way to gain a more loyal reader base or to attract new customers to an opt-in system like a newsletter.
Larger companies may choose to use excess advertising space in their media to promote other branches of the company. While probably not a house ad, a company within a corporate umbrella may offer heavily discounted rates on space that would otherwise not be used by other companies within the same company. This can help a company give its various businesses a competitive edge over others by offering them extremely cheap or even free advertising.
With the advent of banner advertising, house ads are also widespread in online places. Websites that use advertising will often run house ads in rotation with other ads, to promote the sale of advertising space on the site. Since these banners run on a rotational basis, a website can easily guarantee that a house ad will run at any time, regardless of the number of paid advertisers.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
