Despite the prevalence of digital advertising and the assumption that people are no longer choosing print advertising over digital advertising. In fact, most readers still prefer print over digital advertising. Several studies completed in recent years have concluded that both older and younger readers are active participants in print consumption.
And in fact most readers still prefer print over digital advertising and reading material. World wide research has also consistently shown the continued preference for printed text over digital as well. Even though there were high expectations that print would fade away into to the past.
Studies show the most readers believe print advertising to be more trustworthy
Studies consistently show that most people still interact with print media during their day to day lives and believe that print provides reliable trust worthy information that they may not otherwise be able to obtain.
While the numbers of people who participate in e-reading have gone up in the last 5 years the percentage of people that choose the printed copy is still significantly more than those that choose digital. “The percentage of American adults who read an ebook was 28% in 2014, up 11% since 2011. Still, that figure is small compared to the percentage who read a print book, 69% in 2014. Among the adults surveyed, the youngest cohort, age 18–29, was most likely to read a print book, with 79% reporting reading a print book in the past year.” This is surprising considering that some trends seem to point in the other direction that people are more interested in reading online.
Even Younger Generations still prefer print over digital
A separate study geared at younger generations in multiple countries concluded that more than 90% of college students actually preferred the print versions of the textbooks over the digital and that when students did purchase the digital copies, it was most often because it was cheaper and not because it was their preferred method of reading. This finding is also surprising considering it has normally been assumed that younger generations would almost always prefer the digital version over the traditional printed copy.
In fact, younger generations like millennials who have the greatest interaction with technology are more likely than older generations to hold the belief that there is a significant amount of useful information offline. They are also actively visiting libraries and their websites. Even though 2.2 billion people worldwide read news online regularly that’s still less than the 2.5 billion that still prefer to read in print print form.
