Search engine marketing powerhouse Google will permit advertisers in its AdWords program to bid on print ad placements in 30 different magazines.
The new program, a beta test of which rolled out in August 2005, is Google’s attempt to see if the auction model that governs the placement of keyword ads in its search product can usefully be transferred to print, according to a post on the official Google AdWords blog.
“We’ve been testing the placement of ads from our AdWords advertisers in select print publications,” the AdWords Blog post said. “To help us figure our where and how we can best bring value to print advertising, we’ve experimented with text ads, templated ads, and full-page display ads.” Now the company’s expanded print program is intended to gauge marketer interest and to “see if this type of auction makes sense for print,” the post said.
The magazines in the pilot program are in three categories—automotive, technology and lifestyle—and include such titles as Car and Driver, Road & Track, Martha Stewart Living, Ellegirl, Women’s Health and PC Magazine. Marketers have until February 20 2006 to place bids on quarter-page, half-page and full-page ads in the books of their choice. The winning bids will be selected by March 3. The ads are expected to run in issues during the summer and fall of this year.
Google will apply the same discounting system to the print bids that it uses in its keyword auction. In that model, the top bidders pay only a small premium over the second-place bid, rather than their higher winning offer.
Industry analysts have speculated that Google will try to extend its dominance in online advertising into other media. Last August, Google began running ads from AdWords marketers in several computer magazines, including PC Magazine. And in January the company ran a “limited test” that placed marketers’ ads into “remnant space” available in the Chicago Sun-Times—using ad space the paper couldn’t fill on its own.
And on January 17, Google acquired dMarc, a company offering an online platform that insets ads into radio programming. DMarc’s technology could reportedly be adapted to interpolate ads into digital TV programming as well.
“Our advertisers and publishing partners want to run their ads everywhere that makes sense for them, as long as it’s profitable,” Google vice president of ad sales Tim Armstrong said in a speech to the Software & Information Industry Association in early February. “The notion is…we’re able to help advertisers break into other media, such as print, radio and other areas.”
