All Your Ads Are Belong to Us
by John Paczkowski
Posted on July 18, 2007 at 6:40 AM PT
Maybe Google’s manifest destiny really is to control the world’s advertising–online and off.
Encouraged by the latest results of Google Print Ads, a service that allows advertisers to buy traditional newspaper space in 50 national and local papers, the company is expanding it to include 225 newspapers. Together those publications have a combined circulation of almost 30 million and serve all but three of the top 35 media markets, which could be a compelling proposition to the hundreds of thousands of Google AdWords users who are now eligible to purchase ad space in them. “We believe newspapers are a critical component in the marketing ecosystem,” Spencer Spinnell, head of sales strategy for Google Print Ads told the New York Times. “More than 50% of adults read newspapers every day, and marketers are always trying to reach new customers. It’s always a great multiplier effect when marketers think holistically both offline and online.”
Yeah. And it’s always a great multiplier effect when Google thinks holistically about newspaper advertising, which, after all, is a $48 billion-a-year business run by the same industry whose astonishing lack of foresight helped make Google into the online advertising juggernaut it is today.
