URLs in print ads drive traffic online

It’s not like you haven’t heard it before – put your URL on print ads and drive visitors to your website. New figures shortly to be released by the Magazine Publishers of America add more weight to that advice.

by Helen Leggatt

mpa%20logo.jpg The Magazine Publishers of America study examined 833 print ads placed in seven magazine titles across a variety of categories. What it found was that including a URL on a print ad in a magazine does indeed drive visitors to that website, in some cases significantly so.

The study investigates which categories benefitted the most from the inclusion of a URL. Travel came out on top with readers 186% more likely to visit the URL promoted.

Other categories include:

Home – 103%
Women’s service – 98%
Fashion – 52%
Men’s – 38%
Financial – 22%

An easy way to track traffic resulting from print ads is to allocate a unique URL, perhaps per campaign or even per publication, the same way in which a campaign code would be used. Recent examples of this include haveityourway.com (Burger King) and neverfollow.com (Audi).