Google and Newspapers: Marriage of Necessity

Two pieces, one in MediaPost and one in the Washington Post, discuss the apparently strong progress of Google’s print newspaper ad sales program. According to the Washington Post article:

Now, two months into a test with 100 advertisers and 66 newspapers, Google executives say that its pilot program has exceeded their expectations and that they will roll out an expanded version in the coming months. The top five participating newspapers are getting several bids a week from advertisers, the company said.

“The volume [of ads sold] is tripling where we thought it would be,” said Tom Phillips, director of print ads at Google. “I think we’ll have real impact next year” on newspapers’ bottom lines, he said. “We open the medium to a whole new class of advertisers.”

There are many skeptics who would dismiss this. But it might be the case that Google is in fact opening up print newspaper advertising to advertisers who otherwise would not have considered it. Once Yahoo!’s somewhat different program kicks in, we’ll see the effect.

In a world of incredible media fragmentation with online ad rates increasing, traditional media may gain new luster.

AdSense (in online newspapers) has been described variously as “easy money,” “crack” or “herion” by Google competitors and critics. Quigo, for example, has been successfully able to sell into newspapers with the message that they’re controlling their own fate and not subsidizing their competitor (Google).

But if Google is able to successfully expand this program and it yeilds real dollars for newspapers, this program — far more than AdSense — will insinuate Google into the deep tissues of newspaper ad sales.

Google needs newspapers (among other traditional media access) to fulfill its ambition of being a “digital agency” and one-stop platform for all advertising. This broader aggregation of ad inventory is critical for Google’s future growth and to reach into the Fortune 1000.