Why Offline Ads Still Outperform In A Digital-Obsessed World

The world is obsessed with all things digital, and that’s led businesses to pursue more digital-focused marketing strategies. There’s a solid theory behind this: as of 2025, the average person spends 6 hours and 45 minutes looking at a screen every day. That much screen time equates to numerous opportunities for businesses to pump different ads at these individuals. 

And to be fair, online advertising is still extremely effective - to a point.  

Most people assume that digital ads and digital marketing are the best ways to promote a modern business, but that’s not strictly true. It turns out that offline advertising can outperform the digital equivalent in various cases, despite the fact that so many consumers shop online. 

Why is this the case? While a lot of marketers become obsessed with click-through rates and the super-targeted nature of digital marketing, offline ads come with some significant benefits.

Build Better Brand Credibility

Offline ads are more impressive than digital ads because there’s an element of difficulty related to them. Any business can create a digital ad and pay for it to appear on social media or Google searches. Your company doesn’t generate a lot of credibility when it runs ads like these because users are sceptical of anything that’s promoted to them through the internet.  

There’s this constant fear of being scammed, and the lack of understanding from the general public around how online advertising works means they don’t immediately associate the presence of an ad with a brand’s legitimacy. 

Conversely, if you see a business with a more traditional advert - be it on the television, in print media, on the radio, or in various outdoor places - there’s a subconscious connection that this business must be legitimate because it’s managed to get an ad in these places.  

Data from Marketing Sherpa backs this up, showing the percentage of respondents who selected their most trustworthy advertising channels:  

• Print ads: 82%
• TV ads: 80%
• Mail ads: 76%
• Radio ads: 71%
• Outdoor ads: 69%
• Search engine ads: 61%
• Online video ads: 47%
• Social media ads: 43%
• Online pop-ups: 25%

This does the best job of expressing the point that most people trust offline ads over digital ones. Search engine ads are the only ones with some level of credibility, but all of the other digital formats are looked down upon by the average consumer.  

In other words, offline advertising is a more effective way of building brand credibility and trust. The mere presence of your adverts through some of the mediums listed above will boost your status and make consumers view your company as a legitimate place to shop.

Draw More People’s Attention

You can argue that digital advertising draws more people’s attention because it’s more widespread. The internet is a vast place, which means you assume that millions of people see your ads every day - but that’s false.  

For starters, the nature of online ads means your adverts only get sent to segmented audiences. You basically decide who sees your ads based on their browsing habits, which is good, but it decreases your overall reach.  

On the contrary, imagine you invest in bus advertising and get a fantastic advert plastered on a few London buses. Literally millions of people will see your advert every week as the bus moves around the city. While you lose the ability for people to “click” on your ad right away, you gain a staggering amount of brand visibility. 

People become more aware of your brand because they see it everywhere on buses or billboards, or tube stations. You’re drawing people’s attention on a level that online advertising can’t compete with. From a visibility standpoint, nothing competes with offline advertising.  

There’s also the point that it’s very obvious when you’re seeing an offline advert compared with some digital ones. Social media ads are so embedded on the various platforms that you can watch or view them without realising you’re engaging with an ad. That may seem like a good thing, yet it often results in users scrolling or flicking passed ads without even noticing the brand or what’s being promoted.  

Generate High-Value Leads

One of the many benefits of digital advertising (and there genuinely are a lot of positives) is that it sends your adverts to people who should be interested in what you’re selling. Theoretically speaking, this means the people who click your ads are going to be high-value leads - which is great. 

From an offline advertising perspective, the same point can be argued in a slightly different way.  

It’s harder for people to engage with offline ads, which means when someone visits your website or gives you a call as a result of seeing your advert, you know you’ve got one of the highest-value leads possible. They’ve gone out of their way to interact with you after seeing your offline advert, so they’re almost guaranteed to either make a purchase or be very close to buying something.  

Offline advertising is therefore excellent at bringing in these high-value leads and turning them into loyal customers. It’s an interesting debate because digital advertising arguably brings in more leads but offline advertising gives you higher value ones.

No Ad Blockers In Real Life Settings

Of all the reasons to believe in offline advertising, this is the biggest one. New reports show that 42.7% of internet users now block ads. You don’t need to be a mathematician to work out that this is nearly half of the entire userbase. 

What good are digital ads if there’s a chance that half of your target market doesn’t see them? 

On the other side of things, you can’t block adverts in real life. If you invest in bus adverts or a billboard, people will see your promotional material. Not only does this contribute to better visibility, but it also represents better value for money. You put time, money and effort into making an advert, so you want people to see it rather than it being hidden because of some software.   

This post may seem like it’s demeaning digital advertising, but that’s not the intention. We could easily write another post about the benefits of digital ads vs offline ones. No, the main purpose is to show you that offline ads can still outperform their digital counterparts in many scenarios. Rather than sleeping on the more traditional advertising channels, perhaps your business should invest in them.