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Google Set To Expand Newspaper Ad Program
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Ed Peterson, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Intelius, a Web company in Bellevue, Wash., said his firm is placing ads through the program and has been pleased with the results. The company, which offers background checks for companies and consumers, has grown its business primarily using online advertising with Google. It sees newspapers as a way to expand further.
"They've taken the print world and allowed us to manage it in an Internet way," Peterson said. His firm is running several ads a week in the Seattle Times, the Chicago Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News and the New York Times. It is planning to run ads in The Washington Post, which also is participating.
The tricky part, he said, is that it has been a little more difficult to gauge the effectiveness of newspaper ads than Internet ads, which invite people to click on them. "The great thing about the online world is you know immediately" how effective your ad is, Peterson said. But since the newspaper ads have run, he said, Intelius's call volume has gone up and its Web site visitors are buying more frequently. "For us, that points to effectiveness," he said. "You can do some basic math, and you can point to: 'I ran this ad in this region on this day, and how do our numbers look?' -- those kinds of things."
Google's test concludes at the end of January. After that, participating newspapers and Google will refine the program and decide how to go forward.
Owen Youngman, vice president of development at the Chicago Tribune, said Google's experiment has brought several new advertisers to his newspaper, although a few other Tribune Co.-owned papers haven't seen as much activity.
"We've been viewing it as a vehicle for small advertisers," Youngman said, calling it "an interesting research and development project."
For now, Google is taking no commission for brokering ad sales, though it intends to do so later. Such finer points of how a business relationship might work between newspapers and Google have yet to be worked out.
The participating newspapers and Google "have deferred the complicated negotiations," Youngman said.
