Google said that it has expanded its advertising system to offer newspaper ads to its customers, and that 50 major newspapers have signed up to carry the ads in a three month trial. The company said that it has invited over 100 existing advertisers to participate.
Google will use its existing ad booking system to sell advertising space in newspapers that would otherwise remain unsold.
"For advertisers, it gives them access to a network of newspapers through an online interface and the ability to potentially reach a new customer base," Google spokesman Michael Mayzel told news agency Reuters.
In contrast to a previous Google experiment, though, the company will only be a broker between advertisers and newspapers. Google had previously run auctions where it bought and resold advertising space in magazines that the company halted because there was not enough demand for the service.
In the newly planned service an advertiser will use Google's system to select a newspaper and what space they would like and upload the advert to the system. The newspaper publisher will retain control of the advert and control whether or not to publish it.
Industry estimates say that $48 billion is spent in the US on newspaper advertising. In an irony unlikely to be lost on publishing executives, it is the growth of online advertising, which is dominated by Google, which is causing newspaper ad revenues to fall.
Even the New York Times last week described the newspaper publishing industry as being in "freefall", with online advertising to blame. Executives may balk at handing control of a portion of their own market to the one company which is doing more than any other to move advertising revenue online.
The advantage of the system to newspapers, though, is that the system would be largely self-operating and the space filled would otherwise earn no revenue for the paper.
Google said that it would not earn any fee during the trial, but would take a cut of booked ads once the full commercial service is launched. The company is said to take around a 20% cut of online ads which it places.
