You may imagine that trading newspaper ad. space, does, in some meaningful way, relate the price of the goods to the audience delivered. You would be wrong.

The trading process adopted by sellers & buyers and supported by auditors & advertiser procurement management, positively rewards papers offering poor value and penalises those offering better value.

For some bizarre reason, the practice has grown up (and become enshrined) of trading newspaper space on the cost of a single column centimetre of space. Media Madness is at work big time. The process ignores both the size and nature of the audience to that space. It’s like buying TV by the second and outdoor by the square metre.

The process ensures that papers with the fastest reducing circulation benefit most. They can offer bigger discounts whilst selling at a cost per circulation/readership premium.

In every media transaction with which I have been involved, the larger, most desirable audiences have commanded a premium. Not in newspapers.

Here’s just two examples – there are many more

• First, among popular & mid market dailies, the massive audience provided by the Sun is bought at a cheaper cost per reader than charged for the readers of the smaller & fast declining Express, Mirror & Star.
• Second, the same occurs on Sundays where the many News of the World readers can be bought more cheaply than the fewer readers of Express, People Mirror & Star.

Let’s drop now the madness cost per SCC metric that damages advertiser value. We should get focused on trading cost per newspaper buyers & readers. There will be siren voices. But only from the – you know who you are - poorest value papers. The result will demand no more spend from advertisers. The outcome will be a significant re-allocation of funds towards best value for money newspapers. And not before time.

If you think others would appreciate examples from your own experience of Media Madness at work, I shall be happy to include your material, (with your in advance agreement) in this Media Madness series, protecting not only your confidentiality, but also guaranteeing anonymity. Please contact me through the web site www.johnbillett.com or direct at johnbillett@johnbillett.com