Perfume ads with scented pages or fragrance samples used to be ubiquitous in magazines, but in recent years the practice of offering scented samples in ads declined substantially.
This year, however, scented ads have made a comeback. MediaRadar’s fragrance advertising research for Ad Age revealed a 10% increase in scented ads during the first six months of 2014. This report, which looked across 177 consumer magazines, found 296 total scented ads that amounted to 629 total ad pages for fragrance brands between January and June 2014.
“The best way to have women buy fragrance is to have them smell it,” said Donna Kalajian Lagani, senior VP-publisher of Cosmopolitan, the magazine that ran the most scented ad pages. This quote from Lagani illustrates the enduring value of print advertising. With publishing shifting online and digital advertising following, print advertising continues to offer a unique way for consumers to engage with ads.
