Print & Out-of-Home
Print advertising is not dead, just pricier
Circulation has fallen and cost per contact has risen. What has also risen is the attention a printed page receives, and that changes the sum.
2 min readNov 2, 2025
Section
Print & Out-of-Home
Press ads, billboards, DOOH, radio, TV, cinema and direct mail.
Print & Out-of-Home
Newspaper ads: cost and reach
The rate card is a starting point, the position matters more than the size, and the readership figure is not the number you should plan with.
2 min readOct 31, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Advertising in trade magazines
Small circulations, high cost per thousand, and almost no waste. For business-to-business advertisers this is frequently the most efficient channel available.
2 min readOct 29, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Flyers that do not end up in the bin
Response rates between 0.1 and 2 per cent, and the difference between those two figures is almost entirely the offer.
2 min readOct 27, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Planning brochures and catalogues
Expensive to produce, frequently out of date before they arrive, and still the right answer for considered purchases. The planning decides which.
2 min readOct 25, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Business cards and stationery
The cheapest brand touchpoint you own and the one most often left to whoever ordered it last time.
2 min readOct 23, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Newspaper inserts that pay for themselves
Cheaper per household than distribution, targetable by district, and measurable. The most underrated local channel available.
2 min readOct 21, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Supplying print-ready artwork
Six technical requirements that cause almost every rejected file, late reprint and disappointing colour result.
2 min readOct 19, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Choosing paper and finishes
The physical qualities of a printed piece communicate before anything printed on it is read. Four decisions carry almost all of that effect.
2 min readOct 17, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Billboard advertising: formats and prices
Six words, one image, and two seconds of attention. Outdoor is the most disciplined medium there is, and the discipline is where most campaigns fail.
2 min readOct 15, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Digital out-of-home: what it can actually do
Screens allow the message to change by hour, weather and event. Most advertisers buy them and run one static image for a fortnight.
2 min readOct 13, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Transit advertising on bus and rail
Inside a vehicle you have a captive audience with eleven minutes of nothing to do. Outside you have three seconds. Two completely different formats.
2 min readOct 11, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Vehicle graphics as permanent advertising
A one-off cost, no monthly fee, and tens of thousands of impressions a year. For a local business this is the cheapest advertising available.
2 min readOct 9, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Shop windows that sell
The most-seen advertising a retailer owns, changed least often, and usually treated as storage with a view.
2 min readOct 7, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Hoarding and scaffold advertising
Large surfaces at street level, in place for months, at a fraction of poster rates. Available to whoever thinks to ask.
2 min readOct 5, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Ambient media and guerrilla advertising
Cheap, memorable and legally risky. The successful examples are the ones that had permission and a plan for what happens afterwards.
2 min readOct 3, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Radio ads: production and buying
Thirty seconds, one message, and a listener doing something else. Radio is cheap to buy and easy to waste.
2 min readOct 1, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
TV advertising for smaller brands
Regional windows and addressable inventory have brought television within reach of budgets that could never have considered it. The production cost is now the barrier.
2 min readSep 29, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Cinema advertising, booked locally
A dark room, a large screen, and an audience that cannot look away. The highest attention available in any medium, for a very specific audience.
2 min readSep 27, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Addressable TV and streaming ads
Television with the targeting of digital and the attention of broadcast. The measurement is better than television and worse than it appears.
2 min readSep 25, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Unaddressed drops or addressed mail
One costs pennies per household and gets a fraction of a per cent. The other costs pounds per name and gets several per cent. The right answer depends entirely on order value.
2 min readSep 23, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
The sales letter that gets read
Eight seconds to decide whether to keep it. Four elements determine what happens in those eight seconds, and the letter itself is not one of them.
2 min readSep 21, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Customer magazines that build loyalty
Expensive, slow, and one of the few marketing formats customers actively keep. Worth it for a specific kind of business and wasteful for the rest.
2 min readSep 19, 2025
Print & Out-of-Home
Promotional items people actually keep
The measure is not how many you hand out. It is how many are still in use in a year, and for most items the answer is none.
2 min readSep 17, 2025