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What is Print Advertising?

By Felicia Dye
Updated: May 16, 2024
Views: 72,775
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Advertisements are found in many places and in many forms. One of those forms is known as print advertising, which includes those advertisements that are printed on some type of paper handled by the potential audience. This includes offers sent through the mail and posted in newspapers.

A print advertisement can only be effective if people see it. When people are looking through publications, they have a tendency to be receptive to new information and observant of things of interest. One method of advertising aims to attract people to products and services as they are reading or scanning publications. Such advertisements are found in newspapers, newsletters, and magazines. A great deal of planning generally goes into this type of advertising, which often requires a team of individuals.

There are some people who are employed to come up with the best ideas to attract attention and inspire people to spend their money. These people develop a concept, and then they decide on the imagery and wording that sufficiently ties the idea together.

There may be other individuals who deal with placing the ad. Generally, the larger the advertisement, the more it costs to place it in a publication. Some areas of publications can be considered premium spots as well, and these are expensive. It is, therefore, important for a publication to make sure its clients get the exposure they pay for.

Print advertising is often an important source of revenue for a publication. It is beneficial to the publications to sell more and bigger advertisement spaces, and these duties often fall upon a sales team.

Mailers are another type of print advertising. These advertisements range from elaborately designed postcards to note-sized white paper with plain print. They are distributed by postal workers who place them into residents' mailboxes. A major challenge with this type of advertising is getting people to pay attention. Many of these items are often regarded as junk mail and discarded without being viewed.

To reduce the chances of this happening, some advertisers try to interact with people directly with items known as fliers. In many cities, people stand on corners or walk through traffic handing out advertisements. The reasoning for this is that it is often believed a person is more likely to pay more attention to something that is received by hand-to-hand distribution.

Although there are many different options, print advertising can be negatively affected by a number of factors. The state of the economy is a prime example, since when budgets are tight, people tend to spend less money in this area. The Internet is another example, since many advertisers have cut the amount spent on print ads due to better deals and wider audiences online.

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Discussion Comments
By anon351573 — On Oct 15, 2013

I advertised with a national magazine that I feel increased my revenue by almost 1000%. I think it can be very effective.

(I used watchdogmagazine.co.uk)

By anon301275 — On Nov 03, 2012

The power of an effective print advertisement is far from being dead. It's just that there are more options and technology available, and you have to be even more creative and inventive so that your print ads don't fall behind.

By fitness234 — On Dec 04, 2010

As a sales representative and agent for a large marketing firm, I can tell you that there is both a large and significant shift in the use of advertising dollars away from print. While most might think that the natural progression is actually to move the money into online marketing, this is simply not the case. Personally I think that the decline in print ad money actually has more to do with the mental perception that people have about where print information is going. The perceived notion that print information in the form of newspapers and magazines is on the out is only adding to its demise. At some point however, people will realize that there is a significant need for this type of information still and it will revive itself in the market in both information reliability and its practical application of marketing necessity.

So while a great deal of the print money is now going toward online marketing ads, there is actually a larger shift toward television advertisement. While this type of advertising used to be only for the very large scale corporations, the use of new technology and cost effective nature of new equipment means that local video production companies are now able to produce commercial quality video advertisements for a relatively cheap price. Rates for running the advertisements has actually decreased in recent years as well. Once again, I think that the market will settle to a more consistent balance, but until then people will either be hurt or significantly helped by the imbalance in marketing dollar forces.

By IceCarver — On Dec 02, 2010

I think that there is still a significant use of print advertising through our federal mail system. A prime example of this is the use of weekly fliers by supermarket and grocery stores. These print flies often contain the details of weekly sales that allow for smart shopping. Also, many people still use the coupons that are included in such fliers. Until we have become a complete digital society, we will still see the use of these physical print coupons by many in our society. Many stores of course will only give you the discount if you actually have the physical coupon in your possession.

I know that my father is someone that still relies on these weekly fliers as a means of saving a lot of money at the market. By searching over such print advertising, he is able to visit certain stores at certain times for the maximum savings that is possible. This is just plain smart shopping and I really don't see the decline of print advertising happening anytime soon.

I do have to wonder if it is a generational effect that will be lost as that generation grows old and dies. Will our peers actually use the same benefits that many of our parents did in the use of print advertising? My guess is that by the time our children are grown adults, we will see a major shift away from print ads but until that day we will continue to get a ton of mail in our boxes that we simply throw right into the trash can and back into the landfills, this time with ink and chemicals in the mix that we used to create the paper and print the information.

By dkarnowski — On Nov 29, 2010

@JoseJames, I don't think that the print advertising industry will ever completely dissipate. People will always use paper as a medium for information and because of this fact, we will always have print advertisement of some kind or another. It is true that we might be seeing a natural balance occurring in the market where online and other modes of advertising are taking more of a share then the originally primary form of advertising being print.

For many businesses, advertising in print is simply still the best way for the owners to reach their clientele. While the subscription rates of newspapers and magazines have declined, there are significant numbers of people still reading print information and enough that advertisers are still pumping millions and millions of dollars into print advertisement every year.

Newspaper advertising is still the most popular form of print advertising but other print types have seen a rise or decline, depending on their effective nature.

A good example of this is the decline in junk mail that we receive inside of our federal post boxes. These types of ads have become less popular due to the fact that many people simply toss it out without looking if it doesn't have first class postage on the document or envelope.

By JoseJames — On Nov 27, 2010

I truly believe that we have begun to see the demise of print advertising and the related businesses that surround that form of media marketing. Because of this demise, the actual publications that are using the revenue to produce and publish their work are taking a serious hit to their financial bottom line. What this means is that we are starting to see a decline in the ability for newspapers and other types of journalistic medias to perform their function.

While some people might think that such an issue as this is actually not a bad thing, there is a huge and significant detrimental effect to society by making it more difficult for reporters to get the truth of information disseminated to the public.

What this translates to is a less informed and therefore more dangerous general public that has a harder time comprehending as well as making good judgments in the time and place of critical decisions. Print ads allow for these organizations to operate and as we see this decline continue to occur then we will see a continuing fall in our nations journals.

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