Physical Advertising has been around for a long time. Not a few hundred years, but thousands! Dating all the way back to when the Egyptians used Papyrus to create sales messages. Advertising has definitely changed since then, but physical advertising is still just as effective today.
Physical ads leave a deeper impression and footprint in the minds of the viewer than a digital advertisement. According to a study on Paper vs Digital advertising done by True Impact, a Neuromarketing firm. Paper, which included direct mail yielded better results than digital marketing.
The three metrics evaluated in the study were cognitive load (amount of information that working memory can hold at one time), motivation (how persuasive it is), and attention (how long the subjects looked at the content).
They tracked the subjects using EEG for understanding emotions, and Eye Tracking to measure noticeability i.e. what do the subjects notice first, last, most and least.
Direct mail requires 21% less cognitive effort to process than digital media (5.15 vs. 6.37), suggesting that it is both easier to understand and more memorable.
When asked to cite the brand/company name of an advertisement they had just seen, recall was 70% higher among participants who were exposed to a direct mail piece (75%) than a digital ad (44%).
A 2009 study by Bangor University and Milward Brown did a similar study and found that physical material is more “real” to the brain. It is better connected to memory because it engages with its spatial memory networks.
In the digital age that we’re in now, it might be worth experimenting with physical ads to see if your business can yield better ROI. Click on “Find Ad Space” above to see if there’s an ad space for your needs, there could be some great value advertising spaces out there for your business!