You derive your profit not from the circulation that your _advertisement_ gets, but from circulation _that gets people to buy_.
If two newspapers offer you their columns and one shows a distribution almost entirely within the city and in towns that rely upon your city for buying facilities, your business can digest all of its influence. If the other has _as much circulation_, but only _one third_ of it is in _local territory_, mere bulk cannot establish its value to _you_--_it's another case of the big steak_--you pay for more than you can digest. That part of its influence which is concentrated where men and women can't get your _goods_ after you get their _attention_, is _sheer waste_.
By dividing the number of copies he prints into his line rate, a publisher may fallaciously demonstrate to you that his space is sold as low as that of his stronger competitors, but if half his circulation is too _far away to bring buyers_, his real _rate_ is double what it seems. He is like the butcher who weighs in all the bone and sinew and fat and charges you as much for the _waste_ as he does for the _meat_.
There is a vast distinction between distribution for the sake of increasing the _circulation figures_ and distribution for the sake of increasing the number of _advertising responses_.
There is a difference between a circulation which strikes the _same_ reader several times in the _same_ day and the circulation which does _not_ repeat the individual. There is a difference between circulation which is concentrated into an area from which every reader can be expected to come to your establishment, if you can _interest_ him, and a circulation that spreads over half a dozen states and shows its greatest volume in territory so far from your establishment that you can't get a buyer out of ten thousand readers.
You've got to weigh and measure all these things when you weigh and measure circulation figures. It isn't the number of copies _printed_, but the number of copies _sold_--not the number of papers _distributed_, but the number of papers distributed in _responsive_ territory--not the number of readers _reached_, but the number of readers who have the price to _buy_ what you want to _sell_--that determine the value of circulation to _you_.