A Toronto-based agency has purchased an HD video ad on the cover of the December print edition of PM360 magazine. Klick Health, which provides digital marketing services to medical companies, bought the space to run a three-minute video advertising its digital expertise.
The 5-inch screens work for about 10 hours and cost $30 per unit, including the media buy, according to Peter Flaschner, vice-president of strategy at Klick Health. The screens were provided by Vpak Media, which had previously never implemented HD screens in print.
PM360, a New York-based health sector trade magazine, has a circulation of about 16,000. The magazine did a split run with 1,500 issues featuring the video ad and a false cover on the remainder with a call to action to visit Klick Health’s website (the total media buy was around $45,000).
Flaschner said that while the cost is high, Klick jumped at the chance to do something most of the readers of PM360 hadn’t seen before.
With volume, the price per unit for an HD video ad would decrease dramatically. Flaschner said going from a single unit to 1,000 screen units amounted to a price drop of about 40%.
The first large-scale use of video screens in print came in 2009 when CBS and Pepsi embedded a non-HD video ad for the TV network’s fall TV lineup in Entertainment Weekly. At the time the Financial Times reported that the cost was several dollars per copy.
In October, Entertainment Weekly featured another digital ad that showed the latest six tweets from the CW TV network. This fall Marie Claire also ran a video ad for Dolce & Gabbana in its U.K. edition.
