A study by Newsworks claims adding print newspapers to a multichannel marketing campaign can triple return on investment. Newspapers make TV campaigns twice as effective and online display four times more effective.
Rufus Olins, CEO at Newsworks says marketers are returning to print as they become increasingly skeptical about the effectiveness of digital advertising. He cites Lidls as a brand harnessing the power of print to effectively target a large audience.
Lidl’s head of media Sam Gaunt says newspapers have recently helped increase their market share dramatically.
Print media allows us to reach large groups of shoppers at key points in time, with formats that deliver standout and which communicate our messages effectively. It also allows us to be culturally relevant to what’s going on in our customers’ lives, nationally and regionally, across the year.
Richard Furness, director of publishing at The Guardian says print is finally finding its feet following a shift in power brought about by the popularity of digital media.
Print newspapers are a bridge to our future… Where we have got it wrong as an industry in the past is we’ve continued competing with digital. We now have to accept that while print can still be healthy, it must work as a bridge to a very different future.
Gaunt says marketers need to recognise when it’s time for digital to give way to print.
Digital advertising has unique strengths and is an important part of our media mix but… print still holds it’s own: for communicating a simple message to a broad, mass audience print can reach a lot of people with effective formats at comparatively low cost.
He says an audience has a unique relationship with print.
People may spend more time with other media but time spent with print is quality time, where people are less likely to be distracted, and that offers powerful communication opportunities.
With digital advertising the UK’s single biggest advertising channel and growing, The Guardian’s Furness says print still has work to do.
We’re in a hugely volatile moment and it has felt at times like print is just about hanging on, but things are moving to a good place.