At last week's Dessert and Discourse event, Caroline Miller called print ads a "big con" because it's impossible to tell if they have any affect on consumers' decisions. Meanwhile, online advertisements can provide up-to-the-minute data about who is clicking through and buying products. Yet online ads will never cost as much as advertisements in magazines.

Today, the Magazine Publishers of America gave us another reason why magazine ads are so expensive: according to research, they are actually more effective than television and online ads in driving consumer action.

Citing a report from research firm Dynamic Logic, the MPA said that magazines were the most cost-effective advertising medium in terms of two measures of return on investment: people impacted per dollar spent and the cost per person.

"Time and time again, independent research has shown that without magazines, advertisers' media plans would not have been as effective or cost efficient," said Ellen Oppenheim, the MPA's executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

However, no matter how effective magazine advertising may be, it's still suffered greatly in the last few months -- ad revenue dropped 26.6 percent in the third quarter of this year alone, compared to the year before. Although this new report provides some hope that magazine advertisements can still provide the return on investment that marketers crave, who knows if they will have the money to spend on this expensive ads.

Read the full report here.

Related: Magazine Advertising Down In The Third Quarter

(Photo via flickr)