Online Advertising Vs Newspaper Advertising

We all want to get value for money and there is nothing worse than paying thousands of dollars for advertising and seeing no results.
As a very expensive experiment I did just that! I had a theory that advertising through www.whatsonsydney.com and it's newsletter gives more value for money compared to traditional newspaper advertising. It is a no brainer really but I just wanted to prove it once and for all.  I picked a national paper that was running a feature on events and paid for a ad in the feature. I ran two giveaways in the ad worth in total around $260.  I then ran 3 giveaways through the weekly newsletter total value $88. The results will surprise some of you. I did not receive one entry into the giveaway through the newspaper but I received 31 entries in 2 days to the giveaways in the newsletter.  The website statistics also confirmed that the newspaper ad had not generated a significant increase to be able to say that it was definitely due to the ad.
The cost for the one ad in the newspaper would be the same as having an online banner ad on the What's on Sydney website for over 6 months.  In that 6 months the ad would be viewed more than 271,926 times and would receive over 1500 direct click throughs and possible sales.
I still believe that newspaper advertising can work but only if you can afford to run the ad repeatedly. I know some people still buy ads so that you can get free editorial and yes this can be powerful but only if it pays for the ad!
So when you are next looking at where to spend your money which will you choose?