23 Musings

Google has long been talking about offering space in print publications to advertisers using it's Adsense system. Beginning a test this week Google will be offering space to advertisers in newspapers like the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Seattle Times and Philadelphia Inquirer amongst others. These newspapers will be offering advertising inventory that they wouldn't be able to sell normally to small businesses and local advertisers.

Advertisers will be able to bid on the available ad space and the newspapers will be able to accept and decline at will (thus ensuring they at least get the kind of advertising their readership want). The newspapers can also set the prices if they choose, one would assume they would just set minimum bids to again ensure quality of adverts. Again I'd assume that there will be some kind of localisation in place to allow relevant businesses to place their ads with some knowledge that the readers are likely to be interested in their offering.

This test is said to be running until February during which time Google will not be taking any of the ad revenue, if the programme continues they will then take a share.

This is great for small businesses who normally couldn't afford the space in a major newspaper, it brings them the opportunity to try a new medium and to control their advertising from one central space. It seems to me that this brings more benefit to these advertisers than to the newspapers who may have an issue once existing advertisers start requesting different ways, such as auctioning, to buy their space in future!