The Boston Globe announced today that it will begin selling advertising on the front pages of its Business, Sunday Real Estate, Sports, and Food sections.

The first sections to sell advertising beginning August 6 are Business and Real Estate, with the others joining later. "The front page of the Globe is not under consideration," said Globe president and general manager Mary Jacobus. The front of the City & Region section will also remain ad-free.

The Globe joins other major newspapers in what some are considering a new industry trend. Recently, the New York Times announced it will sell advertising for its Business section, while the Chicago Tribune is also considering front-section advertising. The Wall Street Journal is the only paper that will sell small "jewel box" ad space on its front page. The New York Times Co. the parent company that owns both the Globe and the New York Times, has had "encouraging" early results with its Business section ads. The style of the Times ads, three-inch high strips across the bottom of the page, will be the template for ads on the front sections of the Globe.

The Globe previously ran small front-page ads starting in the early 1960's. All front-page advertising was stopped by the mid-'60's.

A new report by television advertising firm Magna Global USA predicts that by 2010, 32 percent of low and middle-income people, even those who own low-cost PCs, will not be online due to the high cost of Internet access ($36 as of December '05.) The report goes on to explain the Internet as remaining the province of "endemic advertisers, marketers with e-commerce activities, companies offering deep information to consumers, and those seeking niche audiences," resultiing in a "scarcity of ways to reach masses of consumers." Ad revenues for television will grow, and as a mass medium, television will continue to be the best means of reaching all demographic groups, claims the report.

Terry Heaton takes a look at the study and finds it short-sighted on two fronts. First, Terry finds it "foolish to take the position that there is only niche marketing and mass marketing, when technology is on the side of people in their efforts to avoid all forms of push marketing." Secondly, Terry looks at the report's suggestion that municipal Wi-Fi is the answer to the high cost of access: "while equal access for all may be a big help socially, it won't change people. Do these marketing types honestly believe that low-income web users will be any less resistant to pop-ups, blinking and whirling, or uninvited video than the current crop of users online? I think not."

Concluding, Terry states that "television will always provide the best bang for the mass marketing buck," but that the people aren't "the mass" sitting in the same place at the same time as in the past. The new era of advertising "demands something other than tired efforts at manipulation of masses, and reports like these that offer the obvious as something new do nothing to inspire new thinking. "