Printer's Tip

Calculating Ad Percentages

For Periodicals-class publications, calculating the advertising portion of your publication and expressing it as a percentage is a requirement.

Both Publishers Press and the U.S. Postal Service recommend calculating advertising percentages by square inches, although it may be done using column inches or pages as well, as long as both advertising and non-advertising measurements use the same units. But it's not quite as simple as that.

The following guidelines, available through the USPS, will help you determine what should and should not be calculated.

• A full page of advertising should equal a full page of non-advertising.
• Blank pages, portions of pages, blank borders, and margins are calculated into the advertising total if any type of compensation was received for them.
• Borders for which no compensation is received are not measured and are not considered advertising or non-advertising portions; however, borders are included in the total weight of the magazine in order to calculate postage.
• Non-rectangular sheets should be calculated based on the smallest rectangular size in which the sheet could fit.
• Two sheets permanently glued together to form a single sheet are included in the measurements for advertising or non-advertising portions based on the resulting total surface area.

Publications will have advertising percentages verified by the USPS at least annually. For more help on calculating ad percentages, contact your local USPS personnel.