RunMags journal
Magazine Rate Card Template for Publishers
A magazine rate card is the price list behind every advertising conversation. It tells advertisers what they can buy, where it will appear and what it costs, and it tells your own sales team which prices they can quote without asking. This guide gives you a rate card template you can copy, explains each part, and shows how to set the numbers from your own costs and audience rather than from someone else's prices.
What a magazine rate card contains
A useful rate card answers the questions an advertiser asks before agreeing to a booking. At a minimum, it covers:
- Ad sizes: full page, half page, third and quarter page, and double-page spreads, with trim, bleed and live-area dimensions.
- Premium positions: inside front cover, inside back cover, outside back cover, and any fixed positions you sell, such as opposite the contents page.
- Frequency discounts: what changes when an advertiser commits to several issues.
- Digital and newsletter add-ons: website placements, newsletter sponsorships and other channels you can actually deliver.
- Terms: currency, whether tax is included, agency commission if you offer it, payment terms, cancellation deadlines and material deadlines per issue.
- Validity: the date the rates take effect and the issues they apply to.
Keep audience and editorial content in your media kit and point to it from the rate card. The rate card should be the document a sales rep can quote from line by line.
Free magazine rate card template
Copy the table below into a spreadsheet or your media kit and replace every figure with your own. All prices in this article are illustrative examples calculated in the worked example further down. They are not market rates, averages or recommendations for any real publication.
Example print rate card, one title, EUR excluding VAT (illustrative figures only)
| Size or position | Size factor (example) | 1 issue | 2 issues (5% off) | 4 issues (10% off) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Double-page spread | 1.85 | 2,310 | 2,195 | 2,080 |
| Full page | 1.00 | 1,250 | 1,190 | 1,125 |
| Half page | 0.60 | 750 | 715 | 675 |
| Third page | 0.45 | 560 | 530 | 505 |
| Quarter page | 0.35 | 440 | 420 | 395 |
| Inside front cover | 1.25 | 1,560 | 1,480 | 1,405 |
| Inside back cover | 1.20 | 1,500 | 1,425 | 1,350 |
| Outside back cover | 1.40 | 1,750 | 1,665 | 1,575 |
Prices are per insertion and rounded to a multiple of 5. Add a column for each extra frequency step you offer, and a row for every fixed position you sell. Then add a short digital section:
Example digital and newsletter add-ons (illustrative figures only)
| Add-on | Unit | Example price | What to state on the card |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newsletter sponsorship | per send | 300 | Number of sends available, placement in the email, material format |
| Website banner | per month | 200 | Placement, sizes, whether it rotates with other advertisers |
| Print + newsletter bundle | full page + 1 send | 1,450 | Which issue and send date belong together, and the saving against buying separately (100 in this example) |
Finish the card with a terms block: currency and tax treatment, payment terms, the booking and cancellation deadline for each issue, the material deadline, file specifications and the date the rates expire. A rate card without deadlines produces late artwork and disputed cancellations.
How to set your rates from costs and audience
Searching for "average magazine ad rates" will not give you a price you can defend. Your rate depends on what your issue costs, how much of that advertising has to pay for, how many pages you can realistically sell and who reads your title. Work it out in four steps.
1. Start with the cost of an issue
Add up printing, distribution, editorial, design, sales cost and your share of overhead for one issue. Decide what share of that cost advertising should cover; subscriptions, single-copy sales and sponsorship may pay for the rest.
2. Estimate the pages you will actually sell
Count the advertising pages your page plan allows, then apply the sell-through you have seen in past issues. If you are launching, use a deliberately cautious assumption and revisit it after two or three issues.
3. Allow for discounts
Frequency discounts, bundles and negotiated deals mean you will collect less than the full rate on many pages. Compare booked revenue with rate-card value in past issues to find out how much less.
4. Calculate the full-page rate and derive the rest
Divide the revenue advertising needs to bring in by the pages you expect to sell, then by the share of the rate you expect to collect.
Worked example (illustrative, not a real title): an issue costs EUR 30,000 to produce and distribute, and advertising should cover 60%, so the target is EUR 18,000. The page plan has 24 advertising pages, and the publisher expects to sell about 17 page-equivalents. After discounts, they expect to collect about 85% of the rate on average. EUR 18,000 ÷ (17 × 0.85) ≈ EUR 1,246, rounded to a EUR 1,250 full-page rate. Every other price in the template comes from that number multiplied by the size factor.
The size factors are choices you test, not standards. Give smaller units a higher price per page area than a full page, because each booking still needs the same selling, artwork handling and invoicing. Covers and fixed positions earn a premium because there are fewer of them, so charge for that scarcity. Your audience is what justifies the full-page rate in the first place: readers who match an advertiser's customers are worth more than raw circulation, so pair the rate card with audience facts from your own subscriber and readership records.
Afterwards, check the result against your own history. If a position sells out months ahead every year, its price is probably too low. If a size never sells, its price or its existence needs a rethink. To check the full-page rate from the audience side, the free magazine ad rate calculator turns your circulation and a target CPM into a price for every page size and frequency.
Frequency discounts and premium positions
Frequency discounts reward commitment, and commitment makes your issue plan and cash flow more predictable. Keep the structure simple: two or three steps, such as two issues and a full year, and state whether the discount applies only when the advertiser runs in consecutive issues. Decide in advance what happens if an advertiser cancels part-way through a series. One option is to recalculate the discount for the issues that actually ran. Whatever rule you choose belongs on the card.
Premium positions need their own rules. Say whether a guaranteed position costs extra, whether covers can be booked a year ahead, and who decides when two advertisers ask for the same page. Once a cover is sold, record it as unavailable so no one else offers it. The guide to managing magazine advertising inventory explains how to handle holds, bookings and conflicts.
Digital and newsletter add-ons
Price digital products on their own delivery unit, not as a fraction of a print page. A newsletter is sold per send, a website placement per period or per impression, and an event sponsorship per event. Start from what you can deliver: how many sends you have, how many sponsor slots each send carries and what traffic your site gets. Only list add-ons you can report on afterwards. Bundles of print and digital are easy to sell but harder to fulfill, so state exactly which issue, send date and placement each bundle includes.
Rate card, media kit or proposal?
These three documents are often confused:
- The media kit sells the publication: audience, circulation, editorial calendar and specifications. It usually includes or links to the rate card.
- The rate card is the standard price list and terms that apply to everyone.
- The proposal is a specific offer to one advertiser: chosen products, issues, any discount and an expiry date. Our guide to creating magazine advertising proposals covers what to include.
When a proposal departs from the rate card, record who approved the exception. Otherwise next year's renewal starts from a price no one can explain.
Keeping rates consistent across reps and titles
A rate card in a PDF works until several reps, several titles or a mid-year price change are involved. Then old PDFs get reused, discounts drift and invoices stop matching what was agreed. Keep one current version per title, date every version, and make sure reps quote from the current version rather than a copy in their inbox. Our guide to magazine sales operations covers the wider process.
In RunMags, your rate card becomes the products and prices that sales reps choose from. You set up your ad products and prices once, and reps build proposals and contracts from them, so their quotes start from the current prices. The advertiser can sign the contract in the advertiser portal, and the products and prices on the contract carry through to the orders and the advertiser invoice. You can see how this works on the advertising sales page and compare plans on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I charge for a full-page magazine ad?
Work it out from your own numbers: the cost of an issue, the share advertising must cover, the pages you expect to sell and the discounts you usually give. The worked example above shows the calculation. Published averages from other titles ignore your costs and your audience.
Should a rate card show prices or say "on request"?
Showing prices saves time for small advertisers and makes your own reps consistent. "On request" gives you room to negotiate but slows down every enquiry. A middle route is to show standard rates and quote bundles and custom packages separately.
How often should I update my rate card?
Review it at least once a year and whenever costs, page count or audience change materially. Date every version and say which issues it applies to, so advertisers with existing contracts know which rates they are on.
Is a rate card the same as a media kit?
No. The media kit explains why to advertise with you; the rate card lists what it costs. You can include the rate card as a section of the media kit or link to it from there.
Review checklist
- Every size, position and add-on has a price, a unit and the issues it applies to.
- Example figures are replaced with rates calculated from your own costs, sell-through and discounts.
- Frequency rules, cancellation terms and material deadlines are stated on the card.
- Only one dated version is in use per title.
Want your sales team quoting from one current price list? Start a RunMags trial and set up your products and proposals.
