A customer inspects journals in downtown Yangon. Print media is still the number one medium for local advertisers.

LAST month, an email message washed up at the offices of The Cook Islands News in the South Pacific. It was a request to place a half-page advertisement in the newspaper, which has a circulation of only 2500. The cost for advertisement was US$370.

“We were amazed – it came from out of nowhere,” the newspaper’s editor, John Woods, said in a telephone interview.

The above paragraphs were printed in the March 3 edition of The New York Times, in an article about Google’s $125 million project to digitise the world’s books and make them available online. Copyright holders are under no obligation to take part – “[b]ut first they must be found” – hence the advertisement.

Despite the rise of the internet, print was still the preferred method of reaching copyright holders, with $7 million of the $8 million Google set aside for legal notice spending going to print media, with at least one print ad placed in each country.

As the Google ad spending suggests, print media is still an important avenue for reaching people, especially in areas with low internet penetration – like Myanmar.

The global decline in advertising spending has, undoubtedly, hit print media hard. Newspapers have merged, some have ceased printing and moved online – last week it was The Seattle Post-Intelligencer – and others have closed completely. The bad news is set to continue. According to auditors Deloitte, some analysts have forecast a 20 percent decline in print advertising in 2009, while the Newspaper Association of America is predicting a drop of 9.7pc, to $34.2 billion.

But print media is still where the majority of advertising dollars are being spent – more than television, internet, radio and outdoor advertising.

Similarly, print is also on top in Myanmar. In 2006, $17.36 million was spent on advertising in the country, mostly in print media, according to the assistant media manager of the Myanmar Marketing Research Development (MMRD). The figures, based on statistics collected by MMRD, show the local industry comprised just .005pc of the global market.

What makes print the most attractive advertising medium here?

A representative from City Mart’s marketing department said the majority of the company’s annual advertising budget is spent on print media, including newspapers, magazines and journals. The reason given was because print allows the company to target their ads more specifically to the audience they are seeking and better promote their brand.

“We operate our stores only in Yangon and Mandalay so we don’t need to prioritise television as our advertising tools,” the spokesperson said. “Putting our ads on the pages of local papers is a pragmatic decision” because we only need to advertise to those two markets. “We are seeing a quick, positive impact on our sales because of those ads,” they said, adding that the company had no plans to cut advertising expenditure.

“We cannot reduce customer-related costs, even in the midst of this global financial crisis. We only focus on reducing other unnecessary costs, where money is wasted. We consider advertising as a customer-related cost and we have no plan to downsize in this area.”

Daw Thinzar, the country representative for Japanese electronics manufacturer Panasonic, also said the bulk of the company’s advertising is spent on print media.

“All the Panasonic advertisements are assigned from the company’s Asia and Pacific Sales Office in Singapore. About 60pc of our yearly ads are directly designed by the Singapore office and the rest are made adjustable in relevant with the local atmosphere by our Yangon office. But most of our ads expenses annually are in the printing media,” Daw Thinzar said.

“We are distributing a variety of items from irons to air conditioners and refrigerators. So we have to decide which publications are most suitable for promoting a specific item,” she said.