The Study Most Marketing Directors Have Not Seen

Every year, the Advertising Specialty Institute surveys thousands of consumers across North America and Europe to measure the performance of promotional products against every other advertising medium. The 2026 edition of the ASI Global Advertising Impressions Study just landed, and one finding stands above everything else:

Promotional products ranked #1 in consumer preference across every advertising format tested. Above TV. Above digital. Above mobile. Above social media.

75% of U.S. consumers have a positive opinion of promotional products. That is a higher percentage than any other form of advertising. It is not close.

If you are running a marketing budget for an enterprise brand and promotional products are not being treated as a primary channel, this data is worth a serious look.

The CPM Argument No One Is Making

Cost per impression is the standard metric for comparing advertising channels. Here is what it looks like for promotional products versus the alternatives most marketing teams default to:

A branded fleece or jacket generates an average of 9,000 impressions over its lifetime. 87% of recipients keep it for more than a year. 78% wear it at least once a week. The cost per impression works out to less than half a cent.

A branded bag generates 4,900 impressions. 92% of recipients use it at least once a month. Cost per impression: 1/10 of a cent.

Compare this to Google Display Network CPMs, which typically run between $0.50 and $2.00 per thousand impressions, or LinkedIn CPMs that frequently exceed $6.00. Physical branded items are generating impressions at a fraction of the cost, with recipients who actively chose to engage with the item rather than scroll past it.

What 76% and 78% Actually Mean

Beyond impressions, the ASI study measured how promotional products affect buying behavior:

• 76% of consumers are more likely to do business with an advertiser after receiving a promotional item
• 78% have a more favorable view of an advertiser after receiving a promotional item
• 74% of consumers would have a more favorable view specifically after receiving a sustainable promotional item

These numbers hold across product categories, geographies, and consumer demographics. The channel works because the mechanism is fundamentally different from digital advertising. A physical branded item creates a reciprocity dynamic. The recipient receives something of value. The brand is associated with that value every time the item is used.

Why This Is Not In Your Media Plan

The honest answer is attribution. Digital advertising is easy to measure: clicks, conversions, ROAS. Promotional products do not generate a click. The impression happens in the real world, over months or years, and the connection back to a sale is harder to draw a straight line to.

But the same is true of TV advertising, out-of-home, and every brand-building channel that has been part of enterprise marketing budgets for decades. The difficulty of attribution has never been the right reason to exclude a high-performing channel from a media mix.

The brands that are winning with promotional products are the ones treating them as a strategic line item, not an afterthought at the end of a campaign budget. They are making deliberate choices about which items to use, who receives them, and how the item connects to the campaign objective.

The Partner Problem

The other reason promotional products underperform for enterprise brands is execution. Most large organizations do not have a partner capable of running a promotional products program at enterprise scale: sourcing the right items, managing quality control, handling complex distributions across hundreds of locations, and connecting the physical touchpoint to the broader campaign strategy.

When the partner capability matches the ambition of the program, the results look like the ASI data. When it does not, brands end up with a box of pens that nobody wanted and a budget line they do not want to repeat.

Where to Start

If your marketing team has not run a serious promotional products program before, the starting point is not a product catalogue. It is a conversation about campaign objectives, audience, and what physical touchpoint would actually create the behavioral response you are after.

At Willwerth Promotions, we work with enterprise marketing teams across Canada to design and execute programs that connect to real business outcomes. If you want to see what this looks like for your brand, reach out here.

Source: ASI Global Advertising Impressions Study, 2026/2027 Edition. Research provided by the Advertising Specialty Institute. ©2026, All Rights Reserved.