[George W. Bush]

According to Abbe Serphos, director of public relations for the Times, "the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692."

What is the "open rate" in the newspaper business? Anyone know?

[mnehring]

This article gives a lot of information on national advertising rates for full page ads.

http://www.gaebler.com/Newspaper-Advertising-Costs.htm

Examples:
A full-page black and white ad in the Wall Street Journal National Edition will run you $164,300.

A full-page color ad in the Wall Street Journal National Edition runs $210,300

A full-run, full-page black-and-white ad in the Washington Post can cost as much as $100,000

Los Angeles Times will run you about $70,000 for a full-run, full-page black-and-white ad

[Bob]

What is the "open rate" in the newspaper business? Anyone know?

You can think of it as the 'list price' on many products or the 'sticker price' on cars. It's the price that's quoted to potential customers prior to any sales negotiations that may take place.

[Gondring]

What is the "open rate" in the newspaper business? Anyone know?

It's the non-contract rate. If you think that Moveon.org didn't use an agent with a contract, then I think you're a sucker who might pay rack rate on a lot of things (like those prices on the back of hotel doors). :-) The Rate Cards are for suckers...there are many, many things to lower the price--often down to less than half price. While 60+% is a lot, it's not unheard of.

Freedom's Watch paid significantly more for their full-page ad, they claim, and recall that the $65K figure came to Jake Tapper from MoveOn.org, not the NYT itself, so it might not be correct. But even if Freedom'sWatch.org paid more, they will have a hard case arguing rate discrimination if they didn't have the same conditions of their advertisement. For example, if they specified location of insertion instead of ROP, then that's a different rate. If they didn't use an agent with a volume discount, then that is a difference. Etc.