Urban Legends - Separating Fact from Fiction When It Comes To Print & On-Line Advertising

Did you hear that the New York City sewer system is infested with deadly alligators? Yes?  Maybe you've heard that internet advertising is going to replace print media?  Oh yes, we've all heard that one!  It's right up there with the 1950's assumption that by 2008 we would all be arriving to work in our very own airborne vehicle.  Look back if you don't believe me and you will see that as far back as the 50's people have been forecasting the demise of print. The truth is that the internet and print media are different forms of information delivery - different in content, different in scope, different in format, different in all kinds of ways.

Advertisements presented in print media persuade the public to buy a product, service or an idea. They help in forming a good public image for a company.  Print advertisements grab a consumers attention with color, size, imagery, layout, positioning or by a striking headline or slogan. They create interest with consumers by holding the hope or promise of achieving something or being someone. They stimulate desire within the consumer that they may or may not have had before.

People are extremely "task-focused" on the Web. That means they are much less open to content that is not directly related to the task or the subject they are searching.  Unlike creative print advertising such as magazines, where consumers are very open to all content that is presents.  In fact, many marketing studies have proven that magazine advertising dominates in creating a desire or awareness of a business or product where there was previously none.

I recently read a very interesting study entitled "Memory for advertising and information content: Comparing the printed page to the computer screen." A key finding of the study is that, "print is consistently better for recall than screen … The central theme to emerge from this study is that individuals have a better ability to recall after viewing materials in print rather than on screen."

Many other studies have found that it can be 20-30 percent more difficult to read from a screen than it is from print. The Internet is therefore a very task-oriented place.  People don't get on the internet to relax, but rather to research a product, service or business.  I am not arguing that the internet isn't a valuable place to advertise, but when paired with print, the results and subsequent ROI are much higher.

With more advertisers wanting to have proven results many print publications offer ad tracking for both their print and on-line publications.  Print publications such as the Yellow Pages have offered their client's RCF (remote call forward) numbers for years.  This is where a unique phone number is published exclusively in an advertisement.  When a consumer dials this number the call is forwarded to the business but the information is captured in a report.  For many years this was successfully used to prove usage of a print product.  As times changed and consumer buying habits evolved this data became eroded.  Why? The answer is simple. People can be influenced by print but they now have the ability to research what they have seen online.  More than 62% of people surveyed stated that they will use the Internet to research a company before they contact them.  Taking that into consideration, it's no wonder that call counts are down or that businesses assume that the Internet is generating all their traffic. 

The good news – many print publications are now offering a similar web based RCF system that will help a business track how much their print advertising is aiding in their web traffic.  By setting up a secondary domain and advertising the secondary domain in the print ads, these publishers can determine exactly how effective your print marketing is.  When combined with a secondary tracking phone number they can track whether your print marketing money is being wasted or not.

In fact, the results have been so favorable that many large on-line companies who frowned upon print are taking another look at purchasing unique print publications because bundling print together with on-line is a winning combination.