Google Print Ad Program-And the Winners Are...

A while back (early February), Google let the Web at large community know that in they were going to start testing print ads, as in, ads that you can read in paper-not online-magazines. I know! Crazy, huh? Reading paper and not the Web.

Anyway, this post from Inside Adwords blog explains it better than I do:

"Recently, we've been testing the placement of ads from our AdWords advertisers in select print publications. To help us figure out where and how we can best bring value to print advertising, we've experimented with text ads, templated ads, and full page display ads. And now, in the continued spirit of testing, we're auctioning ad space in well-known magazines. Why? Because we want to better understand our advertisers' interest in this ad space and see if this type of auction makes sense for print....After the auction closes, we'll contact the winning bidders and work with them to deliver print-ready ads to the relevant publishers."

So the auction is over now. I was contacted by the PR firm for IDG, who owns three of the magazines that participated (Computerworld, InfoWorld and PC World) in the auction, and Jeff Edman, president & CEO, PC World gave me some inside info on why exactly they took part (and yes, dumptrucks of cash did figure largely in the deal).

• How is IDG working with Google?

  "Google has contracted with PC World to run 3 pages of advertising over 12 months. Subsequently, Google conducted an auction for quarter, half, and full-page ads. The auction has concluded, PC World was given the right to accept or reject any of the winners, and we expect insertion orders shortly."

• How does this arrangement fit into IDG's online strategy?

  "This is strictly an off-line media relationship. Each of IDG's business units are free to work with Google or any other search firm as they see fit."

• What does IDG hope to accomplish from the relationship?

  "IDG (participating publications: Computerworld, InfoWorld, PC World) will gain a new advertiser - Google - from this program. We will also have an indirect relationship with the vendors who won the auction. Hopefully, these ads will be productive and these vendors will continue to bid up the price of ad space on our publications and Google will respond by running more pages of advertising. This also represents efficiency for us since Google has relationships with hundreds of thousands of advertisers. There's no way we could cover all these prospects ourselves. Google actually does it for us."

I've been a fan of all these IDG publications for a long time, and I think it will be interesting to see Google's foray into the non-Internet world.

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