Advantages of Print Advertising over Digital

We had our first wintery cold night in Melbourne for 2011 last night, so at my place we had our first open fire of the season. This is where the print media has it over digital. An iPad makes a terrible firelighter. The Age Newspaper and the Yellow Pages on the other hand are excellent. I’m not just taking a cheap shot here either. At one point last year my wife actually contemplated subscribing to The Age just so we would have some firestarters. This is not a commentary on the content of either the Yellow Pages directories nor The Age. It’s simply a statement of fact and how we consume media.

I’d have no idea if the articles in The Age or Herald Sun newspapers were any good because I get news, in my Twitter stream, Google and Facebook friends a long time before it goes into print. If a story is important enough in a newspaper, no doubt I’ll see retweets or status updates about it. For the most part though, if a story interests me I’ll find multiple sources on the web including mainstream media, bloggers, scholar searches and even the occasional crackpot whackjob, just to make sure I get all points of view. Newspapers are now are too niche, slow and dirty for me. Except when it comes to my evening fire.

So the next time I got to Etihad Stadium with Dad to watch the footy, I will greatly accept the free gift of Saturday’s Age as it has about a month’s worth of firelighting in it. The yellow pages isn’t as quite as good as The Age as the pages are smaller and you have to rip up more of them. Are you paying for someone else’s firelighters or is your marketing more accountable than that?