Single-Copy Promotions Guidebook—U.S. Newspapers

Contests

A newspaper may choose to entice the sale of single issues by offering purchasers the opportunity to enter a contest to win a prize. Offering an individual the chance to enter a contest would not impact the qualification of the single-issue newspaper purchase.

Technically, if the winner of the contest is a single-copy purchaser, then he or she has now received a gift as a direct result of purchasing the newspaper. However, since there is typically only one winner, affecting only a single copy of the newspaper, then the impact to paid circulation would be immaterial.

Only if the newspaper held a significant number of contests or offered a significant number of prizes over the course of the audit period that impacted circulation materially, would ABC consider the contest to impact paid circulation.

Example—Contest

No disclosure of these contests is required.

See also Rule C 5.5 Contests and Coupons.