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.But to hear newspaper executives and analysts tell it, the outlook is more cautious. They said Google has brought in new advertisers, such as small companies outside their distribution areas looking to build more awareness for their products. But Google’s online ad technology is so new that it remains unclear how much it will help newspapers, they said.
Is there someone on webmasterworld.com that used Google Newspaper Ad Program? What is your impression?
Thanks,
Mark
[edited by: systematicSEO at 5:48 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2006]
I don't consider this big news. Having been a newspaper publisher in the 1980s, with 5 weeklies, we would have welcomed any agency with a large customer base of small advertsers, such as Google (and realistically, that's all Google is doing here - acting as an agency), but in the long run, the total revenue would be just a dribble, less than 5% of gross.
Google likes to test things and they're not even making a commission on these deals. What would be interesting is whether Google can aggregate enough advertisers to break the rate cards at various newspapers.
In other words, if there's a large enough pool of advertisers through Google, they could demand a lower rate, but they're nowhere near that now. This looks more like a sideshow than anything else and I'd be surprised if it amounted to any big deal.
