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Publisher pushes textbook ads

Publisher pushes textbook ads
McGraw-Hill targets students
Critics warn plan could backfire

RICK WESTHEAD
BUSINESS REPORTER

The first thing Tamy Zubyk sees when she wakes up and peels the curtains back in her Ryerson University dormitory room is the sea of flashing, dazzling billboards that pepper Toronto's downtown skyline.

From then on, the 21-year-old says she spends the rest of her day being targeted by ads in subways, on storefronts � even in the women's washrooms at Ryerson, which feature ads alongside hand dryers and on the inside of the toilet stall doors. The classroom is one of the few advertising-free zones for Zubyk and Canada's other 785,000 university and college students.

Perhaps not for long.

For the past several months, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., one of the country's largest publishers of university textbooks, has been quietly trying to coax companies into buying advertising space in their texts.

'Reach a hard to get target group where they spend all their parents' money,' says a McGraw-Hill brochure touting its planned ads. 'Do you really think 18-24 year olds see those on-campus magazine ads? Do you really think they could miss an ad that is placed in a very well-respected textbook?'

The Whitby-based publisher, which has made presentations about its prospective textbook ads to more than a dozen advertising agencies, says in its brochure that ads can be purchased nationally or regionally, and 'can be so targeted, you can even buy a specific major.

'We've never offered this before and we'll only offer it to the right organizations,' McGraw-Hill's brochure says. The company plans initially to charge as much as $1.40 per book, and the ads would be inserts, instead of being placed permanently alongside text.

Several media planners whose companies weren't involved in the ad push said McG

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