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JournalMedia18 September 2026

Why we still buy print for launches

Press roller pushing out a printed sheet in a dim print works

A full page is the one placement nobody scrolls past. How we plan print next to paid social, and what it costs per remembered impression.

Graham PikeMedia director · 5 min read

Print is the slowest channel we buy and the one clients ask about most. This piece sets out when we recommend it, when we do not, and how we judge it against channels that report in real time.

The question we stopped asking

For years the question about print was cost per thousand: how many people could a page reach, and how did that compare with a feed. On that measure print loses every time. A full page in a weekend magazine costs more per thousand than almost anything we buy on social.

The better question is cost per thousand people who actually took it in. A feed ad is on screen for about a second and a half. A page someone has chosen to turn is looked at for several seconds, often more than once, with nothing else competing for it.

When we recommend it

  • Launches with a look. When the product’s appeal is visual and benefits from scale: a fragrance, a frame, a car.
  • Audiences who still pay for paper. Weekend supplements reach older, wealthier readers who are underpriced on social.
  • Campaigns that need a moment. A single full page on launch Saturday gives the rest of the plan something to point at.

When we do not

If the product needs explaining, if the budget is under six figures, or if the audience is under thirty, print is rarely the best use of the money. We will say so, even when a client would enjoy seeing the page.

How we measure it

We run every print buy with a matched control: the same creative on social in regions without the print, then compare brand search, site visits and sales in the weeks after. For Maison Ilse’s After Hours, the regions with weekend print saw sell-through around a fifth higher than those without.

Print is not nostalgia. It is one of the few places left where an audience gives an ad their full attention, and attention is the thing we are paid to buy.

A man reading a large-format magazine spread at a kitchen table on a Sunday morning
Sunday, 10:40. Nobody skips a page they chose to turn.

Graham Pike, Media director · 18 Sept 2026

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