Today, with the growing diversification and segmentation of printed editions' reader audiences, advertising companies are forced to pay more attention to proper media planning and print media placement. If some decades ago there were only few national printed editions, advertising in which would allow companies to reach the largest segments of their target customer audiences throughout the country, now the further segmentation of such reader audiences has eliminated an opportunity for nationwide advertising through one or few printed editions.

As a rule, now every newspaper or magazine takes its specific market niche and has its limited reader audience. Thus, advertisers have to be more selective and proceed with more careful planning of their advertising campaigns' print media placement. However, with such diversification of the print media market there have also emerged new opportunities and new go-betweens, which permit advertisers to simplify and make the process of print media placement more efficient. Among such media buying innovations, there are also advertising auctions for magazines. Many of them are operating through the Web, providing magazine ad space sellers with the opportunities to reach their target advertiser clients with their offers. Through such auctions many advertisers have an opportunity to purchase the ad space in various magazines from ahead of time or by buy-it-now prices. Thus, both magazines and advertisers obtain an opportunity to better plan, schedule and carry out their future advertising placement and ad space sales.

In this changed media market environment some large companies have created their own inner media buying departments, while the others resort to the assistance of various advertising agencies or media buyers. Many companies combine those two media buying approaches in order to compile and carry out the most effective media buying plan and strategy.

Carrying out print media placement, advertisers have to remember that such placement has to be done well ahead of time, since many editions sell their best advertising space, especially for a holiday or other high seasons in advance. Most of the large companies plan and carry out their major print media placement many months before such high advertising seasons. Later on they may make some more print media placement to meet their current and changing advertising and media needs. However, the majority of print media placement is made in a good time before those ads will actually appear in print.

Another important aspect of print media placement is the requirements most printed editions, such as newspapers or magazines, make for the timely submission of advertisements. Newspaper advertising is more flexible, for the submission terms for ads may be amounted by the matter of days or weeks, while most magazines require their advertisers to submit ads weeks or even months before they will actually be printed. In this way, newspaper advertising and placement gives advertisers more flexibility and a chance for introducing changes into their ads and adapting them to their marketing needs. Such form of advertising is cheaper and could be more suitable for smaller local companies; while magazine print media placement requires more thorough planning and larger advertising budgets.