WSJ (subscription required): Jane Magazine Links Promotions to Purchases

Ad sales consultant Leslie Laredo points out this article in the WSJ as a watershed moment for magazine publishers. Jane Magazine, in an effort to demonstrate the effectiveness of its ads, has launched a contents that requires readers to buy products advertised in the magazine and enter the UPC codes from box tops onto its web site. The result: thousands of entries and a tremendous lift in the magazine's ad sales:

Readers who want to participate must buy Coca-Cola, Kraft's Wheat Thins or other products affiliated with the promotion. They then enter the Universal Product Code from those purchases on the magazine's Web site. Sound complicated? Apparently not, because visitors to the Web site have typed in at least 51,543 codes. Readers may enter more than once.

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Ad pages for the first four months of the year increased nearly 29%, according to Publishers Information Bureau, while ad revenue rose about 52%, to $12.3 million during the period.

Some advertisers say the gambit has persuaded them to pick Jane over other titles. "We have to make choices," says David Raines, vice president of integrated communications at Coca-Cola who oversees the Atlanta beverage maker's media planning and media purchasing. "It's just not as effective to place a static ad in a pod of commercials or a book of pages."