Google recently announced the launch of Adwords Print Ads as beta in US (long time in the making). It calls this system a dynamic offer-based marketplace – not an auction.
The system works in a fairly simple way. Advertisers propose the price they’re willing to pay for an advertisement, and publishers accept or decline those bids based on factors like day-of-week, desired newspaper section, pre-established rates for the advertiser’s industry and available inventory.
With a note at the end that Google will help a person connect with professionals who can help create and manage their ads, its a clear pitch to the small budget advertisers, who can't afford big publications and have so far been happy advertising using Google adwords, to leverage Newspapers - an important component in any advertiser’s media mix.
There is a big problem though, its not going to work for Google! I say this because I fail to understand what value Google is adding in the whole process. While the goal is to extend its position as the nexus between advertisers, publishers, and customers beyond the Internet, its off strategy of 'organizing the worlds information' and some one at Google is going to wake up soon enough to realize it.
The second issue, the target for this service - small advertisers (big advertisers will continue using media houses to provide the service for them). Small advertisers flock Adwords because it works! The beauty of Google's Adwords are its algorithms that link the appropriate ads with each search query or page of online content. What's more, there is immense value in its reports that a small advertiser can unlock, real time, understand what's working and better target his campaigns. In print ads, Google is at the mercy of publications who will sift thru bids, ok them and place it where ever they want on the page. What's Google going to do - show circulation figures, offer help in creating print ads, be the feedback loop, confirm if the ad was shown and...?
Its early days in the experiment. While the game plays out, expect thousands of small Grayscale ads on news papers (definitely not full paged ones).
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