Media Kit

NEWCITY

Newcity is Chicago’s cultural publication of record, an indispensable guide to the arts worlds of our city. Still owned and operated by founders Brian & Jan Hieggelke, Newcity was founded in 1986. We publish a monthly magazine, focused on feature stories and rich imagery, along with a daily newsletter, featuring multiple original stories and a Culture News roundup each morning. We offer dedicated sites and weekly newsletters to each of the cultural worlds of the city, offering contextual opportunities to a highly specific audience.

Inquire about advertising with our form here, or email [email protected] with any questions.

WHY ADVERTISING WORKS

Advertising works because compounding impressions of your business, organization, or brand with someone means that when it comes time for them to make a consideration or decision where you’re a player, they’re more likely to recall, trust and consider you as an option.

When Coca-Cola advertises—which, despite being the biggest name in its category, it does a tune of $4 billion a year, on average—it’s so that when you’re in the aisle at a grocery store, you’re more likely to pick up their brand than the lower-cost generic due to the familiarity and trust they’ve built. Or at a restaurant, to increase the odds that you may opt to order a soda rather than stick with water or go for other choices.

WHY ADVERTISE WITH NEWCITY

–Channel distribution: It’s important to have a mix of places to reach someone – aside from your own marketing channels (website, email list), you should be trying to reach people in as many places as you can, considering that it takes three to eight marketing touches to get someone to consider your event, product, or brand. Someone may see your ad in an email newsletter or magazine, which gets them to click on a review to read a week later, after which they may visit your site to learn more, then get targeted by a social media ad. Every chcannel is an essential part of the customer’s journey.

–Specificity of audience: Our readers are targeted by both interest and geography, giving you great ways to reach art, film, or theater enthusiasts in Chicago, for example. We’re not as concerned with the scale of our audience—we’ve never published best cheeseburger lists to milk our audience numbers—as much as the specificity and loyalty of our audience.

–Content depth: Just as our audience is specific, it’s also loyal – we consider audience depth an underrated aspect of the contemporary marketing ecosystem. Consider how a TikTok star with millions of followers may struggle to fill up an auditorium for a live event—their followers more passerby—while a podcast with a much smaller audience can sell that same auditorium out. The depth of an audience’s relationship with media is incredibly important, and Newcity readers are deep and frequent readers.

–Organizational stature: Organizations or businesses who advertise with Newcity imbue their organization with long-term stature as a part of the cultural ecosystem of the city. Social media can flatten the impression of an advertiser, so having a layer like Newcity in your media mix—one that gives you staying power, and makes you aspirational—is crucial.

—The world you invest in: The tech giants are a part of most digital marketing media mixes, but you get the world you invest in—consider the world you’re creating if you’re investing singularly in these platforms, which are also increasingly your competition. Mark, Larry and Serge won’t send critics to review your shows or write about our city.

AUDIENCE

Newcity readers are affluent, well-educated, culturally curious and sophisticated.

Here’s an overview of our audience:

Household Income:
< $50k: 25%
$50-100k: 32%
$100-150k: 20%
$150k+: 23%

Education:
College: 74%
Grad School: 28%

Age:
18-34: 33%
35-54: 42%
55+: 35%

MAGAZINE

Newcity magazine is the foundation of our brand—a beautiful object published each month meant to inspire and evoke wonder about our city’s great culture. Our average page count for the publication is 100 pages per issue (July 2023-June 2024).

We distribute the publication through a combination of controlled circulation at hundreds of Chicago venues—cafes, galleries, boutiques, arts institutions (view our distribution map here)—and mailed copies to paid subscribers.

Paid subscribers receive periodic art editions with their magazine through our Folio program.
View our publication schedule here.
View our portal rates and sizes here.

Inquire about advertising with our form here, or email [email protected] with any questions.

PRINT SPECS

GENERAL SPECS

300 DPI, PDF preferred file format
Please send questions to [email protected]

SPREAD

Spread dimensions: 16.25″ wide x 10.5″ tall
16.5″ x 10.75″ with required bleed

Please send pages as single page PDFs:
Page size: 8.125″ wide x 10.5″ tall
With bleed: 8.375″ wide x 10.75″ tall
(Bleed required for full page ads)

FULL PAGE

Bleed required for full page ads
Page size: 8.125″ wide x 10.5″ tall
With bleed: 8.375″ wide x 10.75″ tall

2/3 PAGE

4.97″ wide x 9.9″ tall

1/2 PAGE

Vertical: 3.7″ wide x 9.9″ tall
Horizontal: 7.5″ wide x 4.9″ tall

1/3 PAGE

Standard: 4.97″ wide x 4.9″ tall
Vertical: 2.44″ wide x 9.9″ tall

1/4 PAGE

3.7″ wide x 4.9″ tall

DIGITAL

NEWSLETTERS

Our newsletters are at the forefront of our digital operation. We publish a daily (M-F) newsletter, Newcity Today, widely considered a must-read by the city’s cultural leadership and Chicagoans who want to experience the best the city has to offer.

We also publish weekly newsletters for each of the cultural worlds of Chicago—we offer a dedicated space to read about Chicago art in the weekly Art Letter, for example. For each of these lists and Newcity Today, we offer newsletter sponsorships as well as dedicated eblasts.

View a sample of our daily Newcity Today edition here.
View a sample of our weekly Art Letter edition here.

WEBSITES

We believe in the importance of our websites as destinations, particularly as platforms and AI begin to siphon off legacy forms of traffic. We have our flagship site, Newcity.com, as well as a dedicated site to each of the cultural worlds of the city—Art, Design, Film, Lit, Music, Resto (Food + Drink) and Stage. These allow for contextual targeting of our audience, adding an extra layer of specificity to our local audience (Chicago + Film, for example).

View our homepage here.
View our dedicated Film site here.

Since it’s estimated that it can take anywhere from three to eight marketing touches to convert a prospect to a customer, repetition is key. You should always consider that your efforts with Newcity should combine with your own marketing channels, along with other channels, to make this work. An ongoing presence on a site that shares your focus is one layer to this.

DEDICATED EBLASTS

We offer dedicated eblasts to each of our email lists—for each list, inventory is limited to one advertiser/one dedicated eblast a week.

These are great ways to introduce your brand, product, event or production to our readership—direct and pronounced. Go wider with an eblast to our Newcity Today list, or focus on an email list like our Art or Film Letter, each with its own specific audience.

View a sample eblast here.
View our rates and availability here.

Specs:
JPG, PNG, or GIF files. 500k max file size.
Featured image: 700 pixels wide x 1,000 pixels tall
Can also include text and call-to-action button below.
Eblast instructions should also include subject line and link.

NEWSLETTER SPONSORSHIPS

Newsletter sponsorships allow you to reach our readership where they’re most engaged online – reading our newsletters.

Newcity Today sponsorships include a full week of newsletters (Monday-Friday), making them a terrific channel for reaching a wider audience with repetition over a short period.

Sponsoring our weekly newsletters is an outstanding way to build a brand or promote an event to a specific cultural world. Ongoing, monthly sponsorships are available for these newsletters, which are great ways to build or maintain your presence in a cultural world.

Newsletter sponsorships are also great when combined with dedicated eblasts—you might announce your brand, product, event or production in an eblast, then use newsletter sponsorships to remind our audience with subsequent placements (remember: repetition is key!).

View a Newcity Today sponsorship here.
View an Art Letter newsletter sponsorship here.
View rates, specs and availability here.

Specs:
JPG, PNG, or GIF files. 300k max file size.
600 pixels wide x 250 pixels tall

SITE SPONSORSHIPS

Our websites are great places to build or maintain your organization’s brand within a cultural space of the city.

Our ad sizes are custom-sized to be more immersive and engaged than you might typically see, with performance showing anything from 3-10x engagement from our old standard units.

Each site has three sponsorships—Top, Middle, and Lower. Each of these sponsorships include a desktop and mobile placement. Each type corresponds with its placement on our sites—the Top sponsorships include placements at the top of our desktop and mobile sites, for example.

We offer a limited number of slots for each site sponsorship, and encourage ongoing commitments, which are affordable and help to maintain your presence in whichever cultural world you’re a part of or want exposure to.

View our site sponsorship placements and sizes here.
Inquire about availability with our form here, or email [email protected].

PAYMENTS

PORTAL VS. BILLED

We offer discounted rates to advertisers who prepay with our ad portal. We offer billed rates with net 30 terms as well, but given the 25% discount for payment through the portal, most opt to prepay with the ad portal.

Links to product pages at this site will show inventory at the portal rates.

If you pay for advertising through our ad portal, we’ll send an invoice marked ‘paid’ at the end of the month for your records.

IS THAT ALL THERE IS?

We forgot to mention a few things above—beyond all this, we publish a site on Brazilian art, publish custom publications for cultural organizations and even produce feature films!

TESTIMONIALS

If you’re in Chicago and you’re NOT subscribing to Newcity, you’re really missing out… If you subscribe and you don’t think it’s worth the money, I’ll personally give you a refund.
—Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize-wining author, “King: A Life”

After reading today’s intro I am moved to share… Yours is the most informed, down-to-earth, magazine in the area and I literally read it cover to cover.
—James M. Lynch, Executive Director, The Art Center Highland Park

Early on in my career, Newcity was one of the champions of my practice. Always looking for unknown and under-known artists and creatives, they were willing to see further to find talent in the raw. I will forever be grateful.
—Theaster Gates, Visual artist

Newcity is a pillar of Chicago’s art, design, film, music, food, and performance scenes, providing context and depth about happenings across sectors.
—Tanner Woodford, Founder and Executive Director, Design Museum of Chicago