Insert Media Celebrates 50 Years

In the following years, from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, insert media began to boom, notes Henry. He cites rising postage costs as the primary reason inserts began to spread. Much like today, direct marketers looked for cheaper methods of getting their messages to potential customers while catalogers hoped to offset their shipping costs by opening their packages to inserts. “Then you had customers who came along, Western Publishing with their Betty Crocker series and others like them, who would buy literally anything you could get them,” says Henry. The emergence of customers like this drew more attention from list managers and brokers, pulling companies such as Walter Karl and Direct Media into the mix.