Anything For You All: Advertisers are spending almost the same amount on print ads and desktop ads, even though consumers spend five times as much of their day on the latter

Advertisers are spending almost the same amount on print ads and desktop ads, even though consumers spend five times as much of their day on the latter

There's an old saying in advertising that money follows eyeballs. But that's not universally true.

As this chart from Statista shows, advertisers spend the large majority of their dollars on ads targeted at television, mobile devices, and PC web browsers — the forms of media with which consumers are spending most of their time. But the medium that ranks fourth in terms of ad revenue is print — good old fashioned newspapers, magazines, and the like. That seems out of whack when you consider that while print draws in almost as much ad revenue as the desktop web, consumers spend only a fifth as much time with it.

But there is an explanation — consumers trust print ads more than those in other media, according to recent studies. That tends to make print ads more effective — and keeps the money flowing.

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