Should I use promotional items?

By: Lori Walker Sartain

The promotional item industry hit 24.7. billion in 2023. There are numerous companies using promotional items and there is a reason they do and continue to use them year after year. The bottom line matters and promotional items will affect your bottom line.

Cost per Impression

What is cost per impression? It is how many times a person will see your advertisement compared to the cost you spent on the advertisement. Let me give you a break down on how promotional items cost are so effective and save companies money.

A study by the Advertising Specialty Institute found promo products offer a strong rate of return on investment (ROI), with the cost per impression (CPI) as low as 1/10 of one cent, making items like T-shirts, caps and mugs attractive choices for smaller businesses lacking large advertising and marketing budgets. And, when compared to newspaper, radio, magazine, television, internet and mobile advertising, ASI’s study shows that promo products are the most highly regarded form of advertising.

I will break this down in a simple example:

Branded Tote Bags on average, each generates 3,300 impressions over its lifetime.  At $5 cost per bag, the Cost Per Impression (CPI) is less than one cent!

Many advertising methods use this measure to justify the cost.  For instance, a newspaper may have a distribution of 10,000, and assume that each recipient passes their copy onto another reader.  An advertisement on page 3 of the business page "will be seen by 20,000 eyes".  Assuming the advertisement has a cost of $1,000, the CPI would be $ .05.  Five cents per pair of eyes on that ad on page 3.

Promotional outerwear gives 6,100 impressions, bags give 3,300, writing utensils 3,000, and drink ware 1,400. (Source ASI Central)

To put this into perspective, the average cost for Facebook advertising across all industries in 2023 was $1.72 per impression.

Radio ads are sold by the cost per 1,000 listener impressions (CPM) or cost per point (CPP). The cost of individual 60-second radio ads averages from $5 to $750.

The average costs for a 30-second ad spot on LOCAL TV can be anywhere from $10-$100 CPI depending on your area and time slot. Advertising on popular streaming services average around $10 CPI (YouTube) to $30 CPI(Hulu).

Here is a great article about CPM. CPM Advertising Costs

So if you decide to check out and use promotional products, shoot me an email and I can share more.

Lori@Boostersinc.net