sure they are
Depends on what your end goal is.

Even though we're in a gated community we get fliers hung on our yard doors regularly. That's how we found there was a Rotelli nearby in this big shopping center you can hardly see it, so we went and spent like $60+ on food!

Not all promotion methods are good if your end goal is to drive sales. Plus there's testing involved. I did a media buy not long ago in Google's Ad Exchange blew trough over a million impressions and 13k clicks without seeing anything for it