Google Text Ads In Newspapers: But Where Do You Click?

from the questions,-questions dept

A few months ago, it was widely reported that Google was getting into the print advertising business, placing ads in magazines. While they can apparently sell some of those ads at something of a premium, some have questioned how much efficiency Google can really add to the process. The process of setting up Google AdWords is incredibly easy. Setting up an ad for a print publication may take a bit more of an effort... unless, of course, Google simply puts the same ads in print as well. Search guru Danny Sullivan is reporting a rumor that Google is about to start placing ads in Chicago newspapers, and those ads will specifically be pulled straight from their text ads in the AdWords program. Of course, those ads are designed to make you click, and there's no place to click in a newspaper. One option might be to add a phone number and do "pay per call" which has been getting a lot of buzz lately -- but it's not clear how successful those programs are yet. Still, the bigger question is relevancy. Google's online ads can obviously be relevant based on keyword. That's obviously a lot more difficult in a newspaper.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Riley, 9 Nov 2005 @ 11:25am

    Why wouldn't they be relevant?

    My guess would be that this is actually what Google is hoping to bring to the newspapers in terms of effeciency. They can use their algorithms to come up with targeted, relevant ads for the article that is being printed and the newspaper company would insert those in where appropriate. I would actually guess that this will be EASIER in a newspaper since its more structured than a random web page or blog, plus I'm sure the paper would be able to review the ads before going to print and nix some of they felt they were inapprpriate.

    The contract model would obviously be different than the pay-per-click model of the web but there are plenty of well-established ways to do print advertising and its not like that side of the advertising business is going to go away soon.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Josh, 30 Mar 2006 @ 10:23am

    It would work like the adsense program - pay by the ad placement, not by "hits" from the ad. Each google ad also has a website URL at the bottom, so that's where people would go.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.