In general, which form of advertising/marketing do you think is the most effective?
To make it become effective, you need to target a placed where you can get more audience. So yes it will depend on what type of thing that will be put on advertisement. There are things that not meant for online ads , so is for public ads that you can see on streets and national highway.
Which one is most effective? Try to analyzed first by doing brainstorm on which is the best placed to put an ads on your preferred subject. You might want to try signs or billboards for beta testing then if you see it was effective then you can consider putting it online to see if it will gain more boost or just stick to the first one.
But in terms of cost, I see it's more expensive if you will placed an ads on public places plus it has restrictions and guidelines to follow unlike in online ads where you can have lots of options for cheap price.