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Google Forays into Print Advertising
dotpavan writes "It's not that if Google farts, it makes headlines, but this move is a smart one, at least for a tech company which was primarily thought of a search-engine company. Yahoo News reports that Google has ventured into print ads (or offline ads as they are called there) by buying pages at PCMagazine and Maximum PC. More interesting is the website adsbygoogle.com which has these images, but the main page is not functional. "
Is the main idea, and it is done by Google having a pool of advertisers ready to put in ads, and Google gets a "discounted rate" because they are always giving out ads consistently and easily. Very interesting, reminds me of the Costco (or Sam's Club) of advertising.
Is everything on Slashdot lately just the stuff that was on Reuters in the morning? I read this hours ago. Yar! I've half a mind to demand that stories copied from big news sites not be accepted, as they are already obvious at other news outlets.
Why are the article and summary hyping this "move" up so much? Haven't traditional print-publishing companies been doing this for ages? All Google is doing is buying space in a magazine, and re-selling the ad space, if I am not mistaken.
You'll probably think that I am a nut, but I think that Google ads are important for a democratic system. Here's why.
In the traditional media world (newspapers and TV), content producers are beholden to advertisers. They don't want to say anything that will offend their sponsors for fear of losing revenue.
Google (online) ads correct the problem. By truly separating producer and advertiser, keeping each fairly anonymous to the other, content producers are not required to pander to advertisers -- it's difficult for advertisers to boycott the web pages on which their ads happen to appear. Content producers can create content as they wish and express the ideas that they wish without fear of retaliation.
It's too bad a similar system can never be created in the offline (dead-tree) world that Google is now examining.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
Although its strange, because they still have some stuff on their website bashing offline advertising.
Actually, that's their customer's comment. And if you consider it, Google is solving one of two problems mentioned in that comment. They are reducing the price for "offline" advertising through deals with these publications, and packages for customers to advertise on and offline. What remains to be seen is the second part: reaching a measurable audience on the offline side.
Sounds like a decent enough business, but it's awfully hard work compared to the licence to print money that is Google Ads. The online advertisers and the publishers do all the hard work optimising ad positioning, wording, demographics, keywords, etc. Google sit back and take a nice percentage
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
Google wants to learn how to track information and influence. They have to constantly change their plan to do this. They released Gmail by invitation so they could map the connections on the internet in 3 degrees of Kevin Bacon style. Once they figure out how we communicate they can patch that up with how we click ads then how we read ads and compare that to their search data to figure out how to maximize the efficiency of the information control and influence. They can then start printing books with print ads in them. They are a sociologists dream.
The only problem is that these companies already exist. They're called media buyers, or ad agencies. If Google is going the agency route then they might do well because agencies are (to some extent) known for no results and a high cost. If Google is bringing this to the populace, then that's not a bad idea.
:)
As an aside, it would be interesting if Google took the AdWords approach to advertising in print magazines and let companies try to outbid each other for spots in different magazines. To take it a step further, imagine if when the magazine is printed, they bind in an ad by Google that is taken to their printers by Google. So Google buys ad space in the middle of the magazine (in the centerfold). Let's say Google does this with Harpsichord! Harpsichord! Harpsichord!, the quarterly for Baroque music enthusiasts. They usually print 50,000 issues. Google partners with them and Google will say, "Just put our centerfold in your magazine, it will be 4 pages of ads."
Well, now imagine that Google sells this ad space not only size-wise in the page (say, by quarters of a page), but also by chunks (of 10,000). So if you really wanted to advertise in H!H!H! you now have the option of advertising only to 10,000 of those readers, at a reduced cost.
Let's take this a step further and look at a real example. Say you're a small custom amp manufacturer, and you want to advertise in Guitar World. Take a look at their rate card. If you want to advertise a one-page ad in their magazine, it's going to cost you $11,000 for a single one-page color ad. If you only wanted to spend $2000 you're out of luck.
But lo and behold, here's Google, who buys 48 pages of ads from Guitar World for $318,000 (the centerfold is 4 pages front and back, so it's 48 x $6625 = $318,000). Now let's say Guitar World prints 50,000 issues per month. Google has bought the centerfold for the magazine and is now letting YOU advertise in it. But Google takes it a bit further. They deliver the pre-printed centerfolds to Guitar World, so now they can put whatever they want on the centerfolds, and have them be as different as they want. Now they come to you and say, "Hey Small Local Custom Amp Manufacturer, how would you like to advertise in Guitar World with a full page ad? I know you don't have $11,000, but what if told you you could spend $0.30 per full page ad in Guitar World, per magazine?" And you think to yourself, you know - that's not a bad idea. I can spend $750 and have 3,000 people see my big, full-page ad... in Guitar World! And you sign up.
Well, you have 2,500 people see your ad in Guitar World and believe you're a huge big-shot company. Meanwhile, Google spent $318,000 on buying these ads and they get 120 companies just like yours signed up for the first issue, showing their big ads concentrated on a small slice of readers. Google's revenue after one year is $1,080,000. Now imagine this being done in hundreds of magazines, and Google packages this so that your ads can get spread across readers in many different kinds of music magazines. Maybe Rolling Stone, and Spin, and a bunch of others.
In that way, it ties in very nicely with Ad Words. And it can tie in further if Google goes for a cost-per-call and each of these ads has a custom 800 number where you get charged $X if someone calls. (This is already being done by some of the CPC companies, I believe).
Hell, if they're not going to do it, I just might.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.