Google Offering Print Ads To More Advertisers & Papers

Google announced that they have expanded their Print Ads program both on the advertiser and publisher side.

They have expanded their newspaper base from 50 papers now to 225 newspapers representing 32 of the top 35 DMAs and a combined circulation of almost 30 million, according to Google. Plus, Google has expanded the number of advertisers who can use print ads within AdWords.

How To Set Up Google Print Ads, that I wrote this morning at Search Engine Roundtable, shows how many advertisers are now seeing that they can set up print ads within their campaigns.

From the press release:

“We are always looking to extend our editorial products to new advertisers while also driving additional revenue to our business,” said Todd Haskell, vice president of business development, advertising, The New York Times. “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. And Google Print Ads gives us the flexibility and control to set our own pricing, so there is never a conflict.”

“Over the past months, we have worked closely with our newspaper partners to design our Print Ads program to meet their needs and the needs of marketers,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive officer. “Newspapers are an important source of information and a powerful communication tool. With Google Print Ads we will bring more advertisers to newspapers which will ultimately benefit readers, publishers and advertisers.”

Postscript from Greg: There’s an enormously ironic aspect to Google and Yahoo promoting the value of print newspapers and competing to establish newspaper relationships. Their news sites have been argued by some within the newspaper industry as being partly responsible for the decline in print newspaper subscriptions and for hurting the value of newspaper brands more generally. I go into this in further detail in a post on my blog Screenwerk.