What are the options of booking a newspaper ad in Times of India? Please provide a comparison of those options.

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The Times of India Logo

Times of India, established on 3rd November 1838, is the most widely circulated newspaper in whole of India, covering all regions. It has a daily circulation of almost 31,40,000 copies in entire India. TOI is undoubtedly among the most read newspapers across the country.  These are the main reasons why a lot of people and companies prefer to advertise in the Times of India newspaper, be it in the classified section or be it big budget Display Advertising.

Advertising in a newspaper such as Times of India provides proper attention and brand promotion. It ensures massive reach and also invites the reader’s faith due to the popularity of the newspaper. People posses many opinions about Times of India as a newspaper and also about its content, yet its appeal and brand name is the only thing that matters to induce faith of the readers. There are many options to publish ads of all kinds in a TOI, but there are 3 main options which are as follows:

  1. The most common one is to personally visit the publishing house and to get your ad booked directly for select editions

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    The Times of India Front Display
  2. The other option is to give your ad matter, content or design to an individual or independent agent who take all the pains of booking the advertisement in Times of India on your behalf with an extra commission
  3. The last but not the least is to compose and book your ad through an online portal by yourself

Apart from these options which are valid for all kinds of advertisers, there is a fourth option, which is valid mainly for big banners and major brand or product launches. Such advertisers hire major advertising firms or agencies to plan as well as implement their entire ad campaigns; Starting with media planning, media buying to creative and campaign releases or launches.

But for individual advertisers or SMEs this option is quite an expensive affair. Usually every new enterprise or an individual does not have the kind of capital that is required to invest in such ad campaigns. Hence in order to know about the most suitable advertising avenue for Times of India, here are certain comparative points describing the 3 different options of booking TOI ads:

Booking Ads with the TOI directly: Booking an advertisement directly with the publishing house provides you with subsidized rates without any commissions. But on many occasions travelling to the nearest TOI office for getting your ad published, might not actually be the nearest. This process is highly time-consuming and also inconvenient for many people. Standing in queues, explaining the ad matter and how should the ad appear, standing in the queue again to make the payment for the ad and lastly waiting for the receipt, all this invariably sounds extremely hassling.

The main advantage of booking ads directly through publishing houses is that the rates are quite low. Also, even now in many regions people trust this method more as they can communicate with the publishing house representatives in person.

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Classified ads in the Times of India

Booking ads through Agents: Getting your ads booked with the help of third party offline agents appears to be among the second most suitable option for many people. This method is used mainly by people who are short on time and aren’t too tech savvy.  Also a few growing businesses opt for this method of TOI newspaper ad booking. But for many individuals this is quite an expensive option due to the percentage of commission that is to be given away to such agents.

The biggest disadvantage of booking ads through agents is that there is no guarantee or rule book to fix or define the percentage of commission that can be charged by these agents. Many people simply have to pay whatever they quote or ask for. But the entire workload is taken up by them, along with the ad matter and other specifications like category, ad design etc.

Online Ad Booking: Online Newspaper ad booking, appears to be the most convenient and frequently used option among all others. There are various reasons why people opt for online booking of ads in newspapers.

The most important one of those is convenience and the other is saving time. Such online portals have tie-ups with major newspapers such as Times of India and get the rates for their ads directly from the publishing houses. There are barely any unaccountable commission charges made by these websites. They are faster, smarter and save a whole lot of time and effort. Online ad booking also provides you with other options in newspapers along with circulation details, combo packages for multiple editions or multiple newspapers under the main newspaper.

One such ad booking portal, which is the authorised newspaper ads booking agent of Times of India is releaseMyAd.com. They have direct tie-up with TOI and have been recognised by the INS (Indian Newspaper Society-the primary governing body for all media publications) and also have been authorised to take ad bookings for them to be placed directly in the newspaper. To get access to the best rates and instant ad booking services to place ads in Times of India, visit: http://timesofindia.releasemyad.com/.

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