Why Paper Is Quietly Back in the Media Plan
TL;DR: As digital saturates, French advertisers are quietly rediscovering paper — La Poste and Ekimetrics put the return on addressed advertising mail at around 29% above the average of other media, a reminder that the oldest channel can be the freshest idea.
The channel everyone wrote off
In a market obsessed with connected TV, retail media and AI search, one of 2026's quieter stories is the return of paper. French trade press is openly discussing print and direct mail as a complement to digital rather than a casualty of it — and the effectiveness data is harder to argue with than the nostalgia.
Work by La Poste with the analytics firm Ekimetrics has put the return on investment of addressed advertising mail at roughly 29% above the average of other media. Volumes have fallen for years; effectiveness per contact, advertisers say, has not.
Why paper works precisely because it is rare
The mechanism is attention economics. Inboxes and feeds are infinite and effectively free; the letterbox is finite and physical. A well-made piece of mail now arrives into far less competition than it did a decade ago, and it carries signals a banner cannot — weight, texture, permanence, a sense that someone spent real money to reach you.
That scarcity is the point. As digital impressions inflate and get cheaper, the things that are costly and tangible become the things that cut through. Paper is not winning because it is better than digital; it is winning because almost everyone else abandoned it.
Our read: not either-or, but sequencing
The smart use is not to swap digital for print but to stack them. Mail works hardest as the memorable, high-trust touch in a journey that digital then retargets and closes. Treat it as the channel that earns attention and makes a brand feel real, then let performance media do the chasing.
What this means for your business
For SMEs especially, this is an opening. While competitors pour everything into crowded digital auctions, a sharply targeted, beautifully made mailer — to the right postcodes, with a clear offer and a trackable code — can deliver outsized cut-through at a cost that no longer looks old-fashioned. The contrarian channel is often the cheapest attention in the room.
Everyone is crowding into the same digital auctions, bidding each other up for the same impressions. Meanwhile the letterbox sits half-empty. For a small business, a well-targeted mailer is one of the few places left where you can buy attention your competitors have abandoned — and that scarcity is exactly why it works. — Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing
Paper is not beating digital on merit — it is winning on scarcity, as the channel almost everyone else abandoned becomes the one that cuts through.
When did you last test a physical, trackable mailer against your crowded digital spend?
If you would like to know more about this topic, please contact us on danieln@merxmarketing.co.uk
Based on reporting by Stratégies, with effectiveness data from La Poste and Ekimetrics.
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Written by Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing Ltd and Marketing Minute
