Cookie-Less Future Forces Marketers to Look at Print Advertising

As search engines continue to phase out third-party cookies in favour of aggregated data targeting, it is becoming more difficult for marketers to target specific demographics or personalise their digital advertising to meet the needs of different marketing channels.

While these changes have prompted many marketers to develop strategies involving first-party and other GDPR-compliant data sources, many more have taken the opportunity to reevaluate their multimedia marketing mix.

In this article, we will examine how the advent of cookieless digital advertising has driven a steep rise in demand for print marketing strategies, such as door-drop media, and how switching from digital to print could be the solution to the cookieless future of advertising.

Increased Investment in Direct Mail Advertising

Since Google announced plans to replace third-party cookies in January 2024, budgets for direct mail advertising have increased significantly.

In 2023, the IPA Bellwether Report found that direct marketing budgets for UK businesses had increased by 7.3% and 5% in the second and third quarters, respectively, while in Q3 2025, 21.5% of companies raised their spending on direct mail, door drop and other print marketing strategies.

In the age of the infinite scroll, this investment in traditional forms of advertising could seem confusing, were it not for a recent report from the Joint Industry Committee for Mail (JICMAIL) revealing the effectiveness of print marketing as part of an omnichannel strategy. While social media ads can be skipped in less than a second, print ads attract much more attention from their recipients.

Business mail and direct mail items command the most attention, each receiving an average of 193 and 150 seconds, while partially addressed mail (PAM) and door drop items receive 93 and 50 seconds, respectively.

All this time spent engaging with print items adds up, with JICMAIL estimating a collective 10,000 years of engagement by UK consumers. With the proportion of mail prompting an online purchase increasing by 35% in the last year, 8.4% of mail marketing is now directly responsible for a sale, demonstrating the profitability of all that attention.

Improving Customer Loyalty with a Print Marketing Strategy

Given the increased attention given to print media, it may come as no surprise that mail items spend much more time in recipients’ homes than digital adverts do on their screens.

The JICMAIL report found that business mail items are kept for an average of 9.3 days before being discarded, while direct mail, PAM and door drops have lifespans of 8.1, 6.7 and 6 days, respectively. Within that time, business mail items are interacted with 4.9 times, direct mail 4.6 times, PAM 4.2 times and door drops 3 times.

Much like brand visibility on search engines, the more consumers interact with print advertising, the more they begin to forge a relationship with the associated business or brand.

In their report, JICMAIL estimated that the return on investment for direct mail marketing targeted at existing customers in the retail sector increased by 32% over the last year, once again demonstrating the power of print media in our cookie-less future.

While securing customer loyalty should be the ultimate goal of any print marketing strategy, it cannot be achieved without first earning your recipients' trust.

In a headline report, Marketreach found that trust is crucial to 59% of consumers, ranking second only to value for money. Furthermore, a staggering 92% of participants said they would be more inclined to deal with a business that they trusted. In the conclusion of their survey, Marketreach revealed that 54% of consumers trust direct mail more than other marketing channels, making it the most trusted channel for communication.

How Whistl Helps Partners Prepare for a Cookie-Less Future

At Whistl, we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of direct mail advertising and are constantly looking for opportunities to drive print marketing innovation. In anticipation of digital marketers moving into print, Whistl launched its self-service leaflet campaign booking tool, Leafletdrop, to offer a highly targeted print alternative to other campaign booking tools such as Google Ads and Meta Ads. 

Since its launch in 2017, over 300 million leaflets have been generated, and over 1,000 businesses of all sizes have used Leafletdrop to target customers in their locality or across the UK. Industries that have already benefitted from Leafletdrop include:

• Ecommerce and subscription services
• Political parties
• Charities
• Food delivery services
• Retail outlets
• Entertainment outlets

​​​​​With its streamlined navigation system, Leafletdrop enables B2C marketers to book campaigns faster and more efficiently, while targeting specific audiences through geodemographics down to postcode sector level.

Recent updates to the platform have made it easier than ever to design a leaflet, select your geographical areas from 30 million households, print and book multiple designs and campaign drops — all in a matter of minutes.

With no minimum volumes, new users can test an area quickly and cost-effectively to establish how their message is being received, such as using discount codes or promotion time slots.

Manage Your Print Marketing Strategy with Whistl

Whether you want to leverage our anonymised data sets to expand your reach into unexplored demographics or you are keen to build trust with your existing customers with insights from our direct mail advertising specialists, Whistl has an extensive toolkit of print marketing strategies that can be tailored to your needs.

For more information about our door drop services or help with your latest leaflet campaign, please contact us today and we would be happy to assist you.

Updated November 2025