What it couldn’t do that well for magazines, Google is now trying for newspapers, and with some retooling of the original effort: it is going to start selling ads that will appear in the print editions of 50 major newspapers in U.S., among them Gannett, Tribune, NYT, WaPo and Heart, in a three month test, reports NYT.
Google will auction off space online, with 100 advertisers participating later this month. The program will allow advertisers to pick specific newspapers and specific sections within these that the newspapers are opening up for this. On the other hand, newspapers can reject ads that don’t fit or meet their standards of taste, and will also be able to determine pricing. The ad sizes will also be capped at quarter of a page.
Google will not earn any revenue during the test, but when the system is formally introduced next year, it will take a cut of the ad revenue. Google generally keeps about 20 percent of revenue for Internet ads it places.
Most of the 100 or so companies that Google has recruited for the test have done very little print advertising to date…that will give you an idea of what Google is trying to achieve, and how this will benefit newspapers.
BusinessWeek: The contours of the new Google Print Ads program will likely come as a major relief to publishers. One common, if slightly paranoid, concern of print executives was that Google’s auction system would migrate into ad buying, which could in effect allow Google to set publishers’ ad rates…also, though Google executives dismiss the notion, Google Print Ads could reduce the role long played by media-buying agencies by essentially offering advertisers a mechanism to deal directly with print publishers—and also offer marketers like eHealth’s Telkamp rich ROI metrics that media agencies can’t match.