For those of you that read this blog often, you know I tend to write more about online advertising than print advertising. Online advertising comes in so many forms and is so easy to track. I do plan plenty of print advertising each year, but mainly use the medium for branding - keeping our name out there in front of our audience that prefers magazines.

I’m an avid reader of personal finance and small business magazines and over the last year I’ve seen a rise in print advertisements in which advertisers make their one-page ad look like an article or case study of sorts. An example is shown below from Kiplinger’s magazine. On the left side is the last page of an article and on the right is an advertisement for long-term care coverage.

Now, why am I writing about this? Well, for the last year, I’ve shook my head and moved quickly past these ads figuring that this was a wasted effort by the advertiser - until I came to the page shown above. They tricked me and it worked! I recently had a conversation with relatives about long-term coverage and when I saw the page I thought it might be an informative article I could pass on. I breezed right over the small “Advertisement” tag at the top. The article was somewhat informative but got me thinking about the topic again.

So, I stand corrected. Print advertisements like this may have a place. I was so intrigued I actually searched the small print at the bottom and found MetLife was the advertiser. I went to Google and searched on ‘long term care coverage’ and sure enough, MetLife had a paid search ad there offering quotes on coverage.

Now, I’m not in the market for long-term coverage, but I have relatives who are. With many aging baby boomers, this is a hot topic and the ad provided a reason to look for more information. MetLife did a good job of throwing information out and then backing up the ad with a paid search ad offering a quote. Good strategy!


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