2026 REPORT

State of Local Advertising 2026

A short benchmark on the channels local businesses actually choose between. It is short on purpose. Two documents about local advertising publish both a number and the method behind it: the USPS Household Mail Survey, filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission, and a Local Services Ads benchmark that publishes its sample (888 contractors, $6.72M spend, 126,650 leads). Everything here comes from those two, and every figure carries the link and the date we opened it. Where a channel publishes nothing, this page says so instead of filling the gap.

Key findings

The benchmark in three charts

What the data actually says

Start with the number nobody disputes, because USPS collects it and files it: 61% of advertising mail is read or set aside for later, and 39% is binned unread. Then narrow it to the mailing a local business is actually buying. A saturation drop goes to strangers, and the stranger row is lower than the headline: 36% of mail to a household with no prior relationship gets read. That gap is the single most useful thing in the survey, and it is the reason the channel rewards repetition in one zone over one pass across five.

The cost-per-lead chart prices the one channel that publishes a lead price with a method attached. LocalAd is deliberately absent from it. Quoting our own cost per lead would mean asserting a response rate, and the saturation-mail response figures in circulation do not appear in the reports they are attributed to. We will publish ours from QR scan data once enough drops have shipped to make the number mean something, with the sample size printed next to it.

Read our trade-specific breakdowns for the underlying playbooks: plumbing, roofing, house cleaning, and HVAC.

More from LocalAd: browse open zones · pricing · how it works · playbooks by trade · customer stories.