The Wall Street Journal plans to start printing an ad on its front page starting in September, parent company Dow Jones & Co. announced Tuesday.
The advertisement will appear as either a “jewel box” in the lower right-hand corner or a banner running along the bottom of the page.
Dow Jones did not disclose the size of the planned ads, which will leave less space for news, but not alter the layout or number of stories on the front page, a spokesman said.
The move aligns the Journal with two other major newspapers that print ads on the front page: Gannet Co.’s USA Today and Pearson PLC’s Financial Times.
Newspapers across the industry are looking for ways to cut costs and boost revenue as they lose readers and ad dollars to the Internet. On Tuesday, The New York Times announced plans to narrow the width of its flagship newspaper, a cost-cutting move the Journal is also pursuing.
“As we and marketers have reviewed the role of different media, it’s clear that there is no more powerful medium for brand and product marketing than high-impact print advertising,” L. Gordon Crovitz, the Journal’s publisher, said in a statement.
Last September, the Journal began running an ad on the front of its “Money & Investing” section. A similar ad was subsequently added to the front of the “Marketplace” section, as well as the front pages of both the European and Asian editions of the newspaper.
But it is the first time in at least 65 years that an ad will appear on the front page of the Journal, which first began publishing in 1889.
The ads will begin appearing before the January launch of the narrower Journal.
In the first quarter, the print Journal posted a 17.9 percent gain in advertising revenue, including the new Weekend Edition on Saturdays.
Earlier this month, New York-based Dow Jones announced plans to launch a wide-ranging review into its news operations, which also include Barron’s, Marketwatch and Dow Jones Newswires.
The news review comes after new Chief Executive Richard Zannino restructured the company’s operating units in February to more closely align them with the markets they serve — consumers and businesses. Formerly, the units had been organized by print versus electronic distribution.
