This post originally appeared in my column for The Drum on March 19. It has been reproduced here with permission.

Something unexpected is happening with the generation that was raised on screens. Gen Z is scooping up vinyl records and loitering in bookstores —a backlash against the perpetually online generations ahead of them. Other “retro” attractions include magazines, newspapers, and even direct mail.

A 2025 study by The Harris Poll and Quad found that 72% of Gen Z and Millennials wish more brands would surprise them through physical mail. 71% of consumers say print catalogs or magazines feel more authentic than digital campaigns. And 78% of younger consumers say physical mail has prompted them to visit a store. The generation raised on algorithms is actively seeking the tactile, and tangible, even resurrecting Black Friday doorbuster shopping.

For an industry hunting for surfaces AI can’t touch, this consumer shift should be a signal. I’ve spent the past year arguing in this column that AI-enabled shopping threatens the onsite sponsored product ads generating 70-80% profit margins for retailers, and that physical touchpoints represent some of the most defensible ground left. But while the industry pours capital into digital screens and programmatic audio, it’s overlooking a format hiding in plain sight. One that can’t be intermediated by an AI shopping agent, delivers measurable purchase influence, and arrives in consumers’ hands wrapped in exactly the kind of trust that algorithms can’t manufacture.

I’m talking about retailer magazines. Catalogues. Print editorial content. The paper stuff.

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The Costco case

Costco Connection is the third-largest magazine in the United States by print circulation. Every month, 15.4 million copies are mailed to executive members, with another 300,000 distributed in warehouses. According to Costco, over 94% report having confidence in the magazine’s content.

Mark Williamson, who leads retail media at Costco, cited a 2025 readership study that found that 82.7% of Costco Connection readers report buying an item they discovered while reading the magazine.

The New York Times profiled the magazine in 2024, noting that celebrities from Oprah to Tom Hanks have pursued cover features – recognising there are few more valuable placements for someone with something to sell than a publication connected to a store where nearly one-third of US consumers shop. Every word in the magazine is signed off by Costco’s chief executive.

In other words, this is not a side project. It’s one of the mechanisms that cements love for the retailer brand, which boasts member renewal rates above 90%. But it’s also a retail media asset: advertisers in Costco Connection must be Costco suppliers. That’s a direct line from editorial content to in-store purchase.

And Costco isn’t alone. Even Amazon – the company most associated with algorithmic shopping – has leaned into print. It has mailed an annual Holiday Kids Gift Book to Prime members since 2018, and in 2022 said it published its largest-ever Holiday Fashion print lookbook, sent to millions of Prime members in the US, featuring more than 1,000 items and QR-code-enabled shopping.

Other markets show the way

If Costco demonstrates what a single retailer can achieve with print, retailers in other markets show how to formalize the model as a media business.

A couple of bold examples in fact hail from my home country: Australia.

Bunnings – Australia’s dominant home improvement retailer – launched Hammer Media earlier this year, packaging its owned media surfaces into a formal retail media network for suppliers. The Bunnings Magazine is central to that offering. Roy Morgan data puts its print readership at 1.74 million, making it Australia’s most widely read home and garden magazine.

The distribution model is smart: free in-store pickup ties distribution to foot traffic rather than paid subscription, with digital availability extending the content beyond the store visit. Bunnings positions the magazine alongside 14.8 million monthly website visits, 4.5 million email subscribers, and 300 digital screens across 150 stores – but the magazine brings something none of those channels can: extended ‘dwell time’ with editorial content in a context the reader chose to engage with.

Then there’s Chemist Warehouse, Australia’s largest pharmacy chain, which built an entire content brand called House of Wellness. The play here is more ambitious. Chemist Warehouse partnered with News Corp’s content agency, Suddenly, to produce genuine editorial rather than thinly disguised product promotion. They distributed 51 million copies in 2024 across stores and newspaper inserts. The content sits within News Corp’s Body+Soul platform, giving it publisher credibility. The brand also extends to a weekly radio show and in-store activations.

When I posted about this topic on LinkedIn, various retailers in the UK were consistently called out for having top-tier print publications, particularly the department stores John Lewis and Marks & Spencer. One commenter on LinkedIn, Kasia Zawadzka, says she loves the Marks & Spencer Food magazine, because it doesn’t feel like a catalogue at all. “I genuinely pick it up for inspiration. The recipes, the seasonal hosting ideas, the little twists on classics… especially at Christmas. It feels like something you’d buy anyway, not something that’s trying to sell to you,” she said.

What retailers may need to be honest about is whether they can really do lifestyle content well on their own. Chemist Warehouse solved this by hiring people who think like publishers, and it transformed them from a discount pharmacy into a wellness authority. That’s brand equity that transfers directly to advertising partners.

Why paper works when pixels don’t

The case for print and editorial content as retail media isn’t sentimental.

First, these surfaces are genuinely AI-proof. No shopping agent can intercept a customer leafing through a magazine on their couch. No AI assistant can intermediate the discovery moment when someone flips to a recipe that features a supplier’s product. As discovery increasingly moves upstream into AI assistants – and I’ve documented in this column how that shift is already eroding the value of retailer-owned digital surfaces – physical, editorial content becomes even more valuable.

Second, the trust transfer is real. Brian Monahan, the retail media lead at Albertsons, made this argument when I profiled him for this column: some retailers have generational brand equity which could transfer that trust to advertising partners, but most haven’t figured out how. Editorial content is the mechanism. When a consumer trusts the publication, they extend that trust to the brands within it. That’s fundamentally different from a sponsored product listing, where the consumer knows they’re looking at a paid placement.

Third, direct mail and print are performing better, not worse. Direct mail response rates have been climbing steadily, and research consistently shows they outperform digital channels by a factor of five to nine. John Reiss, partnerships director for commerce media networks at Postie, a programmatic direct mail platform, argues that retailers’ mailboxes represent “dormant monetisation inventory that’s just sitting there.” His point: if you’ve got a robust loyalty CRM, you’re not utilising that audience for brand-funded campaigns delivered through a channel with proven cut-through.

What’s holding this surface back

If print is so effective, why isn’t every retailer publishing a magazine? Most likely the obvious answers: cost, measurement, and organisational capability.

Print is expensive. Paper costs are rising, postage isn’t cheap, and the capital required to produce quality editorial content at scale is meaningful. Costco sends out 15.4 million copies a month. That obviously comes at a cost.

Measurement, while improving, is harder than digital attribution. Postie’s attribution model shows strong impact over an 18-day window, with residual effects over 45 days. That’s promising but harder to defend to digital media buyers accustomed to same-day reporting and the ability to pivot almost any advertising input while still in-flight.

Not every retailer that experimented with print kept it at the center of the strategy. Lowe’s built a sizable audience for Lowe’s Creative Ideas, which by 2011 had more than three million subscribers, but over time the company put much more emphasis on digital inspiration content and YouTube-based how-to media.

The opportunity

For retailers trapped in what I’ve called the retail media doom loop – where mid-tier networks can’t invest in technology without budgets, and can’t attract budgets without technology – editorial content offers an alternative path.

For brands exhausted by cluttered sponsored search results and opaque algorithmic placements, the appeal is obvious. An editorial environment where your product is discovered through trusted content rather than a bidding war. A surface that sits in someone’s home for an average of 17 days rather than flashing past in a scroll.

The retail media industry is understandably obsessed with what comes next – agentic commerce, AI-powered creative, full-funnel automation. Maybe what’s really durable here is sitting right on the kitchen counter.