Google Starts Selling Newpaper Print Ads

Google has expanded its Print Ads program, enabling Google AdWords customers to put adds in 225 U.S. print newspapers.

Since it first took off in the 1990s, the Internet has been widely heralded as a threat to traditional newspapers and newspaper advertising, as consumers increasingly turn to online sources for news, and advertisers abandon traditional print advertising in favor of online promotion. Now, Internet titan Google is zigzagging a bit in the opposite direction with Google Print Ads, enabling customers of its Google AdWords advertisement placement service to put ads in some 225 U.S. print newspapers, which in theory have the capability to reach half of U.S. newpaper readers.

Google launched the program back in November in a test run with 50 print newspapers and a small group of advertisers. Now, Google is through the program open to its hundreds of thousands of AdWords customers, enabling them to buy print newspaper advertising in the same way they can purchase Web ads—and radio and TV ad space—via AdWords. Ads range from one-inch insertions to full-page displays.

The 225 newspapers participating in Google’s program are in 32 of the 35 largest metropolitan markets in the U.S. and represent just under 30 million newspaper subscribers. Newspapers participating in the program include the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Atlana Journal-Constitution, The Seattle Times, San Jose Mercury News, and the Gray Lady herself, The New York Times.

Google also announced it and the Washington Post have renewed a multi-year advertising agreement for the washingtonpost.com site.