SEATTLE – Google’s Print Ads links advertisers with newspapers and allows them to transact business online as the publishing industry copes with the growing Web biz.
This service will soon be offered to advertisers and agencies all over U.S. that us Google’s AdWords The initial test of Print Ads in November brought together 100 advertisers and 50 newspapers including The New York Times Co. and E.W. Scripps Co., increasing the involvement of publications to 225. However some of these publications are not quite trusting on the results of the test. Gannett Co. spokeswoman Tara Connell says that there have been new advertisers that the test brought in but they still wait and see for real business to come in through Print Ads.
Through Print Ads, companies with barely any experience or none at all with print advertising are served with their needs to choose an ad space, size, sections and dates for their material on the different newspapers involved. Billing and payment cycles are done online through Google’s technology. In exchange for these services, Google will take a minimal revenue share from each transaction carried according to Google’s group project manager Smita Hashim.
Vice president of advertising at the Seattle Times Co., Mei-Mei Chan says that they are enthusiastic in venturing into other means of offering their ad spaces. But Chan finds that the Google clients are not “traditional medial advertisers.” She adds that most of these clients who advertise in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Seattle Times are companies existing in the Web alone and are outside the Seattle area. Chan is still looking forward to create a more traditional relationship with the new group of advertisers.
Despite Google’s new program, newspapers will keep their trusted means of directly working with longtime advertisers directly.
