Print advertising is alive and well. Despite the growing prominence of our internet marketing and consistent performance of broadcast advertising, print advertising remains many clients’ bread and butter. At Spire Express we treat our graphic design for print advertising with that same reverence. Here’s a guideline to how we do it:
Spire Express Advertising Matrix
Although it is a bit more difficult to track the results of print advertising than the web, it’s still easier than broadcast advertising. In addition to creating numerous types of print advertising in Maine and across the world (see examples to the right) we still try to determine the impact of each campaign (learn more about our marketing tracking and reporting).
Here are some interesting results from the NAA’s 10-market study of newspaper advertising. Among the findings:
Color works
When comparing same-size ads, those with full color were noted 20 percent more often than black-and-white-only ads, and were read most—at least halfway through—61 percent more often. Four-color ads scored higher than two-color ads among survey respondents.
Picture this
Ads with illustrations scored higher when compared to those without. Use of a photograph boosted notice of an ad by 25 percent compared with ads with simple line art. Inclusion of a model in the ad also increased notice.
Show your products
Ads that displayed a product in use were noted 25 percent more often and received read-most scores 30 percent higher than ads without products portrayed. For multi-product ads, noted scores registered 26 percent higher and read-most scores 40 percent higher than similar ads without products displayed.
Price driven
The survey proves what people have reported anecdotally for years—prices draw eyeballs to ads. Ads with 10-to-12 prices were noted and read far more than ads without prices. But the survey also found that too much price clutter achieves diminishing returns.
Size and location
Not surprisingly, full-page ads were noted 39 percent more often than quarter-page ads, but other myths were debunked. For example, the old maxim that right-hand pages are the most effective ad positions doesn’t hold true. Left- and right-hand pages got identical scores.
Placing ads next to editorial content rather than adjacent to other ads had no impact on readership. An ad’s placement below or above the page fold also didn’t affect scores. Placement within a section didn’t change scores unless the ad was the first large ad in a section, or on the back page.
Ad overload
Contrary to concerns about clutter, the survey found that pages with as few as three ads scored the same as pages with up to nine ads.
If you’re interested in print advertising that turns ideas into clients, contact Spire Express today!