Grocery stores, department stores, and fashion clothing stores will often run weekly ads in the local newspapers, especially since they may not know what items will be on sale until the week before the event. Newspaper ad space rates are based on the circulation or number of papers sold to the community. The larger the circulation is, the higher the rates. The radio is more common for advertising today than ever before. There are over 400 million radios in use in the United States today.
Radios reach a wide array of customers and provide great flexibility with a short lead time.
It is important that any message promoted over the radio be repeated a number of times. Costs will vary according to the time of day, the size of the listening audience, and the particular station. It is important to remember that different radio stations attract different target markets. Television ranks second to local newspapers in terms of promotion dollars. The average person watches over six hours of television per day, and over 97 percent of all homes in the United States have television sets.