Advertising Mail: Past and Present

Advertising mail, an important tool for businesses and nonprofit organizations, is critically important to the U.S. Postal Service’s bottom line, generating $19.4 billion in revenue in FY 2015. Most ad mail is sent as Standard Mail, which declined 20 percent in volume during the Great Recession and has not fully rebounded, unlike before when it kept pace with growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Both general economic factors and digital deflation (the pressure for lower prices driven by low-cost technologies) have adversely affected ad mail. However, ad mail itself offers many strengths and some areas of opportunity for the Postal Service.