Analysis shows direct mail enhances returns on ad spend in a saturated digital marketing landscape.
Marketers have spent billions on targeted digital ads. But are digital marketing channels delivering enough impact to justify their rising costs in an era saturated with online ads and perpetually scrolling feeds? As consumer ad fatigue accelerates and privacy changes erode many of digital tracking’s advantages, returns on ad spend for such channels are dipping to historic lows. Direct mail, once seen as an old-fashioned medium, is reemerging as a powerful complement to digital.
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Jonathan Z. Zhang (2025) studied this question.
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