Yes, it is true. After revolutionising the online advertising media industry, Google is now trying out for a share in the print media as well, the traditional advertising media, reports c|net!!
Its a known fact that almost all of Google’s revenue is generated from its ads, and now its quietly testing the print ads, in order to expand an already high revenue business. Google is doing this by buying ad pages in tech magazines like PC Magazine & Maximum PC and then reselling that real-estate in small chunks of quarters & fifths, to a select few advertisers of its AdWords program.
Michael Keen of Inksite, one of the AdWords advertiser, said:
We were approached by Google two and a half months ago, telling us that they were starting this print advertising campaign. Because we had been one of their AdWords advertisers, they thought we would be a good candidate to try their new advertising effort.
Indeed they went with it, Inksite being one of the five advertisers in PC Magazine, paid a cool $1000 for a quarter of a page ad which will be published in the September 6 issue of the PC Magazine. 😉
This is another step of Google towards monopolising the ad sales, be it the virtual market(internet) or the real world. Its also the first time Google has gone offline with any of their products. 😀 I wonder what people will have to say if Google were to take over the world tomorrow, creating a monopoly in the ad-sales. Indeed you can find many loosers whining about Microsoft & its supposedly monopolistic practices, they behave as if the likes of Google or Adobe or Apple etc. are saints who consider the good of humanity to be their top most concern!! 🙄
But this ofcourse shows that those people don’t have any business sense, because every business that’s running for profit aims to monopolise the market to maximise its revenue & profit. Everyone tries to rule the market, whether they succeed or not is a different thing, so if they didn’t succeed then that doesn’t mean that they didn’t try & they are saints.
Look at Apple, their operating system runs only on their machines, I don’t hear anyone complaining or whining about them!! Their iTunes music software is free & comes packaged with their OS, no one complains about it. But people have a problem if Microsoft bundles its Media Player with their own OS, & they say that its killing choices & competition!! 🙄
Some people however don’t take Google’s new venture seriously, indeed, as senior Internet analyst at Piper Jaffray, Safa Rashtchy, was quoted saying
I would be surprised and somewhat disappointed if they were to spend a lot of money and resources on a print advertising unit. My guess is it is just an experiment.
Really Safa? Why would you be surprised & disappointed?
Google is on the other hand, just like the online ads, is doing quite a bit of tracking on the print ads as well, as they use their own 1-800 numbers which forward to the advertiser’s numbers and the URLs listed on the ads are also of Google which then re-direct to the advertiser’s website.
Its just to be seen whether this experiment succeeds or not, given Google’s history of succeeding at its experiments!! 😀
well what about Tv next we will have a Google cable channel – where you can bid for a 10 sec slot and whoever is the highest bidder gets the prime time ads
i have not seen the adwords stuff on the radio yet which stations are doing this ?
I don’t know Andy, the print edition of AdWords is surely on, maybe they haven’t started on radio yet or maybe they have but you won’t know as I don’t think they will say something like “these ads have been brought to you by Google AdWords”!!! 😉 Its different on a medium where you can see from the one where you can only hear stuff!!