Google to sell Ads for Newspapers

Internet search giant Google is expanding itself in the advertising section, starting a test programme which will allow businesses to click on Google and find newspapers to advertise in, sources confirmed last night.

Google will begin the three month test from today which will allow customers to buy ads in more than 50 top newspapers, including The New York Times(NYT), Philadelphia Inquirer, San Jose Mercury News and seven papers owned by Gannett (GCI).

The programme is designed to let advertisers find appropriate newspapers by searching on the site, browsing the rates and buy the ad.

Its basic strategy is to act as a middleman to help escalate newspaper ad sales and be a one-stop platform for its customers. "The plan is to bring lots of new advertisers and revenues to newspapers," says Tom Phillips, director of print advertising for Google.

Netflix (NFLX), eHealth (EHTH), eBags and other limited small group of advertisers will benefit with the facility initially, and Google plans to open it to the general public by next year.

Google began ad brokering for magazines but failed to fetch success. The Mountain View, California based company has said it will also broker ads for radio and television.

The programme was reported last night in the online version of the Times and the Wall Street Journal, confirming the participation of 50 newspapers.

Google will add a "newspaper advertising" tab in its Adwords.google.com site, where businesses will bid on the search item they want. The more the people interested in that item, the more will be the cost.

Google will also provide the facility for businesses to bid for the advertising space in newspapers and upload photos and type in information to create an ad on the spot, sending it directly to the newspaper.

"For us, this opens up a new level of advertisers," says Denise Warren, the Times chief advertising officer.

Greg Sterling, an analyst at researcher Sterling Market Intelligence informed that the newspapers will benefit more than Google, which will have a small percentage of income, refused to be revealed. "It creates additional inventory and higher revenues," he says. "It gives them reach to Google advertisers, who probably haven't thought much about advertising in print."

Janis Jarosz, vice president of brand marketing for the Avis Budget Group car rental firm, said that their company had been calling newspapers directly for advertisements till date, but having it all online is “efficient”.

Earning $2.6 billion in the third quarter, Google wants to expand beyond search advertisements and is keen to start audio advertisements, which it will begin testing within next two months.

American Public Corporation and search engine Google provides several products that are search oriented, including web search, image search and news. In early 2006, it also launched Google videos, which enables users to view freely available videos.

As of September 2006, Google has 9,378 full time employees and is the most used search engine on the internet, with a market share of 54%, ahead of Yahoo and MSN, which have 23% and 13% respectively.