As reported by NetNewsCheck.com this past week, with the coming of fall, U.S. retailers and media look forward to the holiday shopping season. And with forecasters predicting about a 4% increase in holiday sales this year, newspapers can expect to reap the benefits of ever earlier Christmas advertising. The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) found that nearly 80% of adults took some action as a result of seeing an ad in a print newspaper in the past 30 days, and half bought something that was advertised, said Jim Conaghan, NAA VP of research and industry analysis.

 

The annual forecast of holiday sales from the National Retail Federation (NRF) anticipates a 4.1% increase for the November-December period compared with 2013. Should sales increase by that much, it would represent the best performance since 2011, which had a 4.8% gain.

 

The season is crucial for newspaper media as well as their advertising clients. A key component for the success of newspaper media operations is to continue to demonstrate to clients that consumers respond to advertising in print. Fortunately, the figures from the NAA’s "How America Shops & Spends 2014" report provides support for that proposition.

 

The results from this survey of more than 1,500 adults revealed that eight in 10 took some action as a result of seeing an ad in a print newspaper in the past 30 days, and half bought something that was advertised. Four in 10 took an action online, either by going to a website for the product or service that was advertised, or using search to find out more, or actually making a purchase online for the item advertised.

A particularly interesting aspect of the report revolved around the engagement with print advertising by consumers who also use digital advertising. More than half (55%) of those who used various online ads for purchase planning or making buying decisions ads in the past week also used print newspaper in the same time period for the same purpose. In the course of a month, nearly nine in ten of those using online ads took some action as a result of a print newspaper ad (86%) or a newspaper preprint (84%).