Mobile vs print

Strategizing Ad Spend With Digital / Mobile Focus

The advertising game has changed. As print volume has drastically declined, digital opportunities have skyrocketed. According to TechCrunch, digital is the fastest growing advertising medium, and will soon reach second place to TV in overall spend. At the moment, mobile advertising only accounts for 20% of that digital ad spend, with the bulk spent on search (SEO/SEM). Print, however, is dying. While every other medium has seen growth in 2015, print has declined by 7.9%.

Us Ad Spend 2015

And rightfully so. Print doesn’t work as hard for your advertising dollars as digital. It’s difficult and expensive to execute, and there’s no guarantee that who you really want to see it, will actually see it – and then take action. Print ads are traditionally measured by impressions, which is really the ad property’s best guess as to how many people will have exposure to your ad. Quite frankly, it’s a junk number, with no real measurement aspect to it. Digital, on the other hand, is highly measureable. You can not only measure who sees your ad, but who clicks, where they click, when they click, where they go when they leave, and if they ultimately buy anything from you – now or in the future. With mobile, you can drill down even deeper by targeting only those within a certain area, like attendees at a conference or major event. You can also time your campaigns down to the hour, turning it on or off almost as easily as a light switch. With so many customization options and reporting metrics, your ad dollars work harder for you when put against a strategic digital or mobile advertising campaign. In conclusion, your advertising mix should look similar to the graph above – growth in mobile and digital, and receding in print. If it doesn’t, you may want to re-evaluate your plans, especially as you start looking at 2016 when the divide between print and digital will only widen.