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Per publicly available ASI summaries from the ASI 2026 and 2023 Ad Impressions Studies, health-category promotional products have grown from 640 average impressions per item to 4,000 — a 525% jump over three years. This post covers what drove the growth, what it signals for category selection, and where health products now sit in the broader promotional mix.
Health-category promotional products averaged 640 impressions per item in 2023. By 2026, that figure reached 4,000 — a 525% increase in three years, per publicly available ASI summaries from the Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI) 2026 and 2023 Ad Impressions Studies. No other promotional product category tracked in the longitudinal data shows comparable growth over the same period.
Yes, and the magnitude is not an outlier artifact. The ASI longitudinal methodology tracks impression-per-item averages across product categories using consistent recipient survey inputs in both study years. The 640 → 4,000 movement in the health category reflects a genuine shift in how often recipients interact with health-branded items and how broadly those interactions reach observers.
Per publicly available ASI summaries from the ASI 2026 and 2023 Ad Impressions Studies:
How this compares against other category trajectories over the same period:
| Category | 2023 avg impressions | 2026 avg impressions | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health / wellness | 640 | 4,000 | +525% |
| Bags / totes | 1,940 | 4,900 | +153% |
| Power banks | 870 | 1,800 | +107% |
| Drinkware | 3,162 | 1,300 | -59% |
| USB drives | 851 | 400 | -53% |
Per publicly available ASI summaries from the ASI 2026 and 2023 Ad Impressions Studies.
Three factors explain the shift, and they compound each other.
First, the range of products categorized as "health" expanded between 2023 and 2026. Items like branded sanitizer, wellness kits, posture supports, sleep aids, and branded first-aid sets now appear in promotional catalogs that previously stocked only branded pedometers and pill organizers. A wider category with higher-utility items naturally generates more daily interaction events.
Second, recipient wellness awareness increased materially after 2020 and has sustained into 2026. Recipients who are more conscious of health behavior use health-adjacent products more frequently — and more consciously, which means more active impression moments. A branded item that sits at a desk becomes a high-impression asset when the recipient is actively thinking about the behavior the product supports.
Third, health products are now used across a broader range of daily contexts than older health-item formats allowed. A branded insulated water bottle qualifies as a health-category item; it generates impressions at the desk, at the gym, at the coffee shop, and in transit. A branded pedometer from 2018 generated impressions primarily in one context. Context diversity is a direct multiplier on total impression count.
A 4,000-impression average per item puts health-category products into the top tier of promotional ROI by impression yield. At a $15 unit cost — mid-range for a branded wellness kit or quality water bottle — a 4,000-impression yield produces a cost-per-impression of under $0.004. That's a fraction of the cost-per-impression delivered by most digital ad placements.
For buyers who have been anchoring their programs on writing instruments, tote bags, or drinkware, the 2026 impression data suggests health products warrant a direct slot in the program mix rather than an occasional add-on. The impression gap between writing instruments (historically one of the top categories) and health items (now generating 4,000+ average impressions) has closed and reversed.
Health-category products also carry a brand positioning benefit that compounds the raw impression count. A brand that equips recipients with a wellness item communicates values alignment in a way that a branded pen or mug does not. That alignment drives favorable impression scores — the metric ASI uses to capture recipient sentiment about the brand on the item — which further elevates the category's performance profile.
The 525% health impression growth is part of a broader story of category-level divergence in promotional product performance since 2023. Some categories are gaining fast; others are losing ground. The promotional products category trends for 2026 post maps the full category landscape — including which formats are gaining share, which are contracting, and how buyer program mix is shifting in response.
For the complete longitudinal data context, the industry research pillar indexes all research across the promotional products category.
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Procurement & Trade Policy Analyst · 14+ years experience
Priya covers procurement, tariffs, and supply chain policy for Promolistic. She spent ten years running sourcing programs for mid-enterprise marketing departments and has navigated three tariff cycles — Section 301, USMCA, and the 2026 Section 122 reset. Her writing translates trade-policy news into procurement decisions buyers can act on.
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