Abstract:

Helsingin Sanomat is the largest newspaper in Finland with a circulation of over half a million copies on Sundays and over 427.000 on weekdays. A major share of the newspaper's advertising sales consists of classified advertising, mainly real estate, cars and recruitment advertising. The role of recruitment advertising has recently changed in Scandinavia leading to an extension of the original advertising concept. The recruitment ad pages are no longer considered only a list of available jobs but more or less an extension of the newspaper's business news pages containing interesting information about the business community. This would indicate that these ad pages are read not only by actual job seekers but anyone interested in what is going on in business. These assumptions were known by the advertising sales people at Helsingin Sanomat, but advertisers tend to base their decisions on facts, not assumptions. With over 1,3 million readers in a country where the population is just under 5 million it is not hard to produce high readership figures in most categories. But the readership survey provides information only about the total readership of different media and advertisers required more detailed information about the readership of these particular ads and ad pages.