Print vs Digital Marketing: Which Works Better?

Print vs digital at a glance

Attention and trust

Digital advertising is everywhere, but much of it goes unseen. Two Sides' 2025 Trend Tracker survey of 12,400 European consumers, including UK respondents, found 58% don't pay attention to most online adverts. And around a third of UK adults (36%) said they use ad-blocking software in a 2024 Statista survey.

Print works differently. People choose when to pick it up and how long to spend with it. JICMAIL's household panel records 4.4 interactions with every direct mail item, over an average of 7.4 days. Royal Mail Marketreach research found 87% of people describe mail as believable, and 71% say they completely trust the mail they receive.

Do people take in more from print?

Research on reading suggests they do, at least for informational content. Two large meta-analyses compared reading on paper and on screens:

• Delgado et al. (2018) reviewed studies involving 171,055 participants and found better comprehension from paper than from screens. The paper advantage grew when readers were under time pressure.
• Clinton (2019) reviewed 33 studies and found reading from screens had a negative effect on performance compared with paper, mainly for expository (informational) texts. Readers also judged their own understanding more accurately on paper.

For marketing that needs to explain something, such as a financial product, a charity's work or a product range, that is a real advantage. See printed vs digital brochures for more.

Cost: per impression vs per result

Digital almost always wins on cost per impression. But impressions are not results. A fairer comparison is cost per response or cost per sale, which accounts for how many people actually notice, believe and act on the message.

JICMAIL's Response Rate Tracker, covering 4,939 measured UK campaigns, puts average ROI at £8.80 per £1 for warm direct mail and £2.10 for cold mail. Print costs can also be brought down with sorted Mailmark postage, efficient formats and clean data. See how much direct mail costs.

Where UK advertisers are spending

UK advertising spend reached £46.7 billion in 2025, according to the Advertising Association/WARC Expenditure Report. Search took the biggest share at 38.3%, followed by social media at 24.7%. Direct mail accounted for £966.9 million.

Digital channels take most of the budget. That also means they are the most crowded, and it gives brands that use print a way to stand out from competitors who rely on screens alone.

Better together: combining print and digital

• Mail drives online action: 9.5% of mail items prompted a website visit in Q2 2026, and direct mail with a QR code was 60% more likely to do so (JICMAIL).
• Mail boosts digital ads: research for Royal Mail Marketreach found people who had seen mail looked at a social advert from the same brand for 30% longer.
• Mail improves campaign effectiveness: IPA Databank analysis reported by Marketreach found campaigns including mail were 27% more likely to deliver top-ranking sales performance and 40% more likely to deliver top-ranking acquisition.
• Purchases happen everywhere: 41% of mail-driven purchases in Q2 2026 were made in-store (JICMAIL).

Practical ways to combine them: retarget mail recipients online, follow a mailing with an email to opted-in contacts, use QR codes and personalised URLs, and match all responses back to the mailing file. Read direct mail vs email and direct mail vs social media ads for channel-specific comparisons.

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