Print advertising benchmarks: calculate your own ratios

What to take away

Print advertising benchmarks are useful only when you know what each number divides by. This guide shows how to calculate CPM, cost per inquiry, cost per qualified lead, and revenue per dollar from campaign inputs. Its examples illustrate the arithmetic, not published industry averages.

Two kinds of published source sit behind these figures: circulation audits and audience surveys. The Alliance for Audited Media, formerly the Audit Bureau of Circulations, and Verified Audit Circulation publish statements for paid consumer and newspaper titles in the United States and Canada.

BPA Worldwide audits controlled and business titles. The Media Rating Council accredits the audience surveys that sit on top of the audits.

Audit statements provide circulation, and the rate card provides price. The calculations below show how to build your own ratios; they are not a published cross-channel benchmark series.

Rates vary by title, format, placement, season, and negotiated terms. Direct-mail totals also include list rental and postage, so use current quotes and actual campaign costs rather than treating broad descriptions as benchmarks.

Calculating CPM, cost per inquiry, and cost per lead

The examples below illustrate the arithmetic; they are not market-wide benchmark ranges. Work up the ladder only as far as your data supports. Each rung has its own denominator.

For illustration, cost per thousand, usually written CPM, is media cost divided by circulation in thousands. A full-page rate of $4,000 in a title with 25,000 circulation is $160 per thousand. The same rate in a 50,000-circulation title is $80. That gap is the whole reason publishers quote circulation first.

For illustration, cost per inquiry is total campaign cost divided by tracked inquiries. Total campaign cost includes space, production, list rental where you buy one, postage, and fulfillment. A campaign costing $9,000 that returns 60 inquiries is $150 per inquiry. Drop the $2,000 production and postage from the numerator and you get $117, which is the number that flatters the channel.

For illustration, cost per qualified lead divides total campaign cost by the leads sales accepts. If 60 inquiries turn into 15 qualified leads, $9,000 spent gives $600 per qualified lead.

For illustration, revenue per dollar divides revenue attributed to the campaign by total campaign cost. If those 15 leads close 3 orders at $4,000 each, $12,000 back on $9,000 is $1.33 per dollar spent.

What sits behind the circulation figure

Circulation is copies. Readership is people. The multiplier between them is pass-along, and it is where most comparisons break.

Pass-along multipliers are not audited facts. Treat any readers-per-copy figure as an illustration unless a dated, sourced readership study and its method support it; ask for the specific study before using a multiplier. No circulation audit verifies readership.

Paid circulation is verified by an audit body. Controlled circulation is free to a qualified list and is not the same evidence. Request the audit statement and check whether the figure is average per issue or a single-issue claim.

Estimated readership comes from survey work, so it carries a method, a sample, field dates and a nonresponse rate.

To sanity-check an estimate, multiply audited circulation by the multiplier, then compare the implied readers with the size of the market segment. If the implied number exceeds the population the survey claims, the estimate fails. Also check whether the figure is average-issue readership or twelve-month reach, and ask for the sample, field dates and weighting.

The NIST handbook discusses comparisons of two processes in an engineering-statistics setting, but it is not a source for print advertising rates or campaign ratios.

For industry-level context—not print-ad rates or campaign ratios—the Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes GDP by industry data.

Cost categories to put in the numerator

A print campaign's true cost is wider than the space invoice. Add these before you divide.

Leave any of these out and your cost per inquiry falls while your bank balance does not.

Make the comparison reproducible

State the population, period, inclusion rules, and calculation. Also state the currency, maturity window, and uncertainty. Do this before you compare two results. Rebuild the figure from the source, then log any mismatch. A benchmark earns its place when the local team can say why the comparison group fits the decision.

Date the next review and name the trigger for an earlier one, such as a change in how an edition is defined. Record the comparisons you rejected and the one you kept.

Common questions

What is a good cost per thousand for print?

There is no universal figure. A controlled-circulation trade title, a paid metro daily and a regional shopper sit in different bands, and the band moves with format and season. Rebuild CPM from the current rate card and the audited circulation for the issue you are buying, then compare only like with like.

Can cost per inquiry compare two publications?

Only when the offer, the placement, the tracking method and the fulfillment are close enough to hold constant. A publication running a phone number against one running a unique URL is not a fair pair. Split the same offer across both, in the same season, before you rank them.

How many inquiries become qualified leads?

That ratio is yours, not the industry's. Track inquiries from the day they arrive to the day sales accepts or rejects them, and keep the definition of qualified stable across campaigns. After several cycles, your own ratio beats any published average.

Should estimated readership set the media plan?

No. Use readership estimates to frame a range, then let your own response and outcome data decide the repeat buy. Ask for the questionnaire, sample disposition, weighting and field dates behind any readership figure a publisher supplies, and label it as an estimate when the method is not available.