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WSJ to Feature Ads on Front Page

The parent company of the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones and Co., announced this past Tuesday that the long-standing, trusted financial news source will soon start displaying advertisements on the front page of its U.S. edition. Since it began publishing in 1889, the Wall Street Journal has seen front page ads as taboo for the past 117 years or, according to some news sources, just the past 65 of those years. The Wall Street Journal is making several changes to their layout as a cost-cutting measure, narrowing the width of their pages, the New York Times is also making a similar change.

While information about the size of the space for the ads is not yet being made available, a spokesman for the Wall Street Journal was quick to note that the layout, already being planned for alteration, will not affect the number of stories on the front page. Costs for the ads will likely range into six-figures, with some estimates going higher than the already $137,000 or so that it costs to run a four-color, half-page ad in the Wall Street Journal?s national edition. USA Today and the Financial Times are two national newspapers that already run front-page advertisements.

The move was a long time in coming, as last September the Wall Street Journal begin running five-by-seven inch ?jewel box? ads on the front of the Money, Investing, and Marketplace sections, and the ?jewel box? ads have also been appearing on the cover of the Wall Street Journal?s Asia and European editions.