Research and reach your target audience. In other words, if you want to reach women with a perfume advertisement, don’t advertise in Field & Stream.
Visually arresting and appealing. Use headlines and illustrations to make your ad stand out from surrounding print. Colors, fonts, and graphics all matter in making your advertisement (and thus your product) appealing.
Clarity is key. Don’t distract the reader with unconnected language or illustrations. Use your advertisement to increase your audience’s familiarity with your corporate brand or to specify how the reader can respond.
Don’t be your own worst enemy: Don’t let unprofessionalism (either grammar errors or poor taste) turn your readers against you.
Less is often more. White space is not necessarily a bad thing. Readers are usually only going to skim an advertisement, so don’t pack it full of information.
Does size matter? A large ad is more likely to attract the reader’s attention, but a quarter-page advertisement (or smaller) is more affordable and can still grab attention. In particular, a small ad that is the only advertisement on a page can be just as effective as a full-page ad.