With the steady decline of circulation numbers, newspaper readers continue to exhibit a high level of brand loyalty.

They have and always will read the same ‘paper’ that they have for the past 15 years. I can say that my parents certainly followed suit, as did their parents, growing up in the mid 60s. Sorry, mom, it’s for the sake of the blog.

Both generations read the LA Times and neither would ever be bothered by any competing or specialty papers. Although, a recent report by Scarborough Research (www.scarborough.com) shows trending of a different sort:

“(Newspaper Readers) have deep affinity with both their printed newspaper and their newspaper website: 83 percent agree with the statement, “I love both my printed newspaper and visiting my newspapers website.”

We can make several assumptions about the evolution of the newspaper reader based on the report’s findings.

1. Readers are increasingly more Internet savvy
2. The newspaper’s online affiliate and print are integrating effectively to drive traffic
3. From an advertising standpoint a great opportunity for message overlap can be achieved.

Atlas Research (www.atlassolutions.com) identifies message overlap to be valid for increasing consumer purchase intent; “Consumers reached across multiple publishers were twice as likely to convert as those reached only on a single publisher.”

Typically, I would only use newspaper to serve two purposes; local event promotion and a retail push. Whenever I’ve taken a stab at generating bonifiable leads I haven’t been able to achieve Cost per Acquisition(CPA) goals. Maybe someone has had a different experience than me, but newspaper would be the last place I would ever have thought to launch a direct response campaign. With Scarborough’s report, new life can be breathed into a once drearily performing media touch point. Integrating the paper with its online affiliate is a great way to behaviorally target a Designated Market Area (DMA).