Print advertising remains a large, varied market spanning direct mail, newspaper advertising, and printed promotional space. Recent U.S. figures show $9.13 billion in direct-mail advertising revenue in 2024, while U.S. newspaper publishers reported $7.90 billion in advertising-space revenue. The measures are not interchangeable: they cover different business universes and definitions, and postal volume also includes mail beyond advertising.
Contents
- U.S. print advertising revenue
- Newspaper advertising mix
- Direct-mail scale and volume
- Major newspaper company benchmarks
- Print reach and format use
- International benchmarks
U.S. print advertising revenue
The Census-linked historical series for direct-mail advertising, covering all U.S. establishments in its measure, reported revenue of $8,595,945 thousand in 2022, $8,837,372 thousand in 2023, and $9,129,949 thousand in 2024. In dollar terms, the latest figure is about $9.13 billion. These are reported revenue measures for the stated years, not forecasts. Direct Mail Advertising, All Establishments: Revenue
U.S. newspaper publishers reported $7,899,479 thousand in advertising-space revenue in 2024. The comparable 2023 figure was $7,858,123 thousand. The 2024 and 2023 figures come from Census information-revenue tables and describe employer-business revenue for the relevant newspaper-publishing measure; they should not be added to direct-mail revenue as though they represented a single, non-overlapping market total. Information: Revenue by Product for Employer Firms in the U.S.: 2024 and Information: Revenue by Product for Employer Firms in the U.S.
Postal financial data provides another view of demand for printed marketing distribution. USPS Marketing Mail revenue increased by $292 million, or 1.9%, in fiscal 2024 compared with fiscal 2023. In the first quarter of fiscal 2025, USPS Marketing Mail revenue was $4,589 million, compared with $4,139 million in the year-earlier quarter. Marketing Mail is a postal class that includes advertising and other mail, so these figures are useful for scale but are not a pure print-advertising revenue series. USPS Fiscal Year 2024 Annual Report to Congress and U.S. Postal Service Reports First Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Results
Newspaper advertising mix
The New York Times offers a clearly reported company-level view of how print and digital advertising coexist. Its 2024 Form 10-K reported $506.311 million in total advertising revenue for 2024, including $164.219 million from print advertising and $342.092 million from digital advertising. Print represented 32.4% of the company’s advertising revenue in 2024. The New York Times Company 2024 Form 10-K
The same filing reported print advertising revenue of $187.462 million in 2023 and $204.848 million in 2022. Print’s share of advertising revenue was 37.1% in 2023 and 39.1% in 2022. The sequence provides a company-specific view of a declining print share over the three reported years; it is not a projection for every newspaper publisher.
| The New York Times advertising measure | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Print advertising revenue | $204.848 million | $187.462 million | $164.219 million |
| Print share of advertising revenue | 39.1% | 37.1% | 32.4% |
Pew Research Center’s analysis of publicly traded newspaper companies gives a longer historical comparison for advertising mix. Digital advertising supplied 17% of newspaper companies’ advertising revenue in 2011 and 48% in 2022. That analysis concerns publicly traded companies and those specific years, so it should be read as a benchmark for the analyzed group rather than a complete census of all newspapers. Newspapers Fact Sheet
Direct-mail scale and volume
USPS Marketing Mail volume reached 80.9 billion pieces in 2016 and 78.3 billion in 2017. It was 77.3 billion pieces in 2018, 75.7 billion in 2019, and 64.1 billion in 2020. The volume then measured 66.2 billion pieces in 2021, 67.1 billion in 2022, 59.4 billion in 2023, 57.5 billion in 2024, and 56.8 billion in 2025. A Decade of Facts and Figures - Postal Facts
| Year | USPS Marketing Mail volume |
|---|---|
| 2016 | 80.9 billion pieces |
| 2017 | 78.3 billion pieces |
| 2018 | 77.3 billion pieces |
| 2019 | 75.7 billion pieces |
| 2020 | 64.1 billion pieces |
| 2021 | 66.2 billion pieces |
| 2022 | 67.1 billion pieces |
| 2023 | 59.4 billion pieces |
| 2024 | 57.5 billion pieces |
| 2025 | 56.8 billion pieces |
The postal series shows the scale of physical mail moving through the Marketing Mail category and the published year-to-year path. It does not identify the advertising share of every piece. The category includes advertising and other mail, while the direct-mail revenue series above is a separate revenue measure. Keeping the two distinctions visible matters when evaluating campaign reach, production volume, or market size.
Major newspaper company benchmarks
Issuer filings show how different company portfolios can produce different print-advertising totals. Lee Enterprises reported $81.5 million in print advertising revenue in 2024, down 35.2% from 2023. Its total advertising and marketing-services revenue was $275.7 million, of which digital advertising and marketing services supplied $194.2 million, or 70.4%. Lee also reported $17.5 million in commercial-printing revenue in 2024, down 13.0% from 2023. Commercial printing is reported separately from print advertising. Lee Enterprises, Incorporated 2024 Form 10-K
DallasNews Corporation’s TDMN segment reported $22.914 million in print advertising revenue in 2024, compared with $35.045 million in 2023. Across advertising and marketing services, DallasNews reported $47.900 million in 2024 and $59.038 million in 2023. These are segment and company filing measures with their own reporting boundaries, not a direct comparison of audience size or local-market reach. DallasNews Corporation 2024 Form 10-K
Gannett reported 2024 print-advertising revenue of $451.589 million in Domestic Gannett Media and $74.211 million in Newsquest. Its consolidated print-advertising revenue was $525.800 million. The figures illustrate the importance of identifying whether a statistic is domestic, international, segment-level, or consolidated before comparing publishers. Gannett Co., Inc. 2024 Form 10-K
Print reach and format use
Audience behavior adds context to revenue trends. In a 2025 Pew Research Center survey, 30% of U.S. adults who get news from local daily newspapers primarily used the newspaper’s print version, while 68% primarily used online channels. In 2024, the corresponding figures were 31% for print and 66% for online channels. These percentages describe respondents who get local-daily-newspaper news; they are not percentages of all U.S. adults. How U.S. adults access local daily newspapers
For historical context, among U.S. adults who got news from local daily newspapers, 54% primarily used print in 2018 and 43% primarily used online channels. The survey wording and population differ slightly across the published period labels, so the results are best used as format-use benchmarks rather than as a count of total newspaper readers.
Pew also estimated combined print-and-digital U.S. daily newspaper circulation at 20.9 million on weekdays in 2022, down 8% from 2021. Sunday circulation was also estimated at 20.9 million in 2022, down 10% from 2021. These are estimated circulation figures combining print and digital, not print-only readership or advertising impressions. Newspapers Fact Sheet
International benchmarks
Canadian newspaper-publisher statistics provide a separate national benchmark in Canadian dollars. Statistics Canada reported total advertising sales of $722.8 million in 2024, down 26.1% from 2022. Print advertising sales were $407.7 million in 2024, down 34.3% from 2022, while digital advertising sales were $315.1 million, down 11.9% from 2022. Operating revenue was $1.6 billion in 2024, down 17.9% from 2022. The Daily — Newspaper publishers, 2024
The same Statistics Canada release reported that print circulation sales fell $49.9 million from 2022 to 2024 and that Canadian daily-newspaper print circulation sales declined 11.0% over that period. These figures are for Canadian newspaper publishers and are not U.S. dollar figures.
Japan Pressnet reported Japanese newspaper advertising expenditure of 341.7 billion yen in 2024. It also reported newspaper advertising volume of 3,737,743 columns and said advertising occupied 27.7% of Japanese newspaper space in 2024. The currency, column-based volume measure, geography, and space definition differ from the U.S. revenue and postal measures, so the Japanese figures are an international benchmark rather than a converted market total. Changes in Newspaper Advertising Expenditures and Volume of Newspaper Advertising
These international figures reinforce the need to state the measurement basis alongside any print advertising statistic: revenue, volume, circulation, audience format, advertising share, and advertising space answer different questions, even when they describe the same broad industry.