Continuing its venture into print advertising, Google today announced it will expand the size and scope of its Print Ads scheme to include more than 225 newspapers, located in 32 of the 35 biggest U.S. metropolitan markets, with a combined circulation of almost 30 million subscribers.
The program, which started as a 50-publication test last November, lets hundreds of thousands of advertisers in the US with a Google AdWords account place newspaper ads in the same way they buy online advertising. Advertisers place bids for space and upload ad images to the Google AdWords system, the newspapers can then see real-time status of the auctions and communicate directly with the advertisers.
"Google Print Ads has brought in new advertisers who were either too small to consider advertising in a national newspaper or who hadn't tried print advertising because their business was largely online," said Todd Haskell, the New York Times' vice president of business development for advertising.
Google claims its early test have been successful for advertisers. Nonetheless, measuring success in print campaigns is inherently more difficult than estimating results online. The search giant promised to bring the measurability of online ad sales to offline print media, in an effort to get more advertisers to use newspaper ads.