Advertising in Newspapers Through Google
Ideally, the best marketers utilize both on and offline marketing together. While I’ve never advertised in a newspaper (not even a classified ad) I was an advertising rep for my college newspaper. It was volunteer but I learned a lot from doing it. Plus one of my regular customers owned a Cajun restaurant and offered me free food (like hush puppies or fried alligator).
Back then I thought I was furthering the cause of our paper, but really I was learning about business and sales with no pressure on me. I wish I’d done even more volunteering like that.
I’ve been interested in Google’s newspaper advertising or as they call it Google Print ads (this goes to a video explaining how it works). Today I gave this a closer look. Note: you have to have a Google AdWords account to access this. First, I was surprised that they don’t just include traditional papers but have some weeklies, Spanish papers, college papers, and other niches. Over 600 in all. Note: if you live in Utah you can choose from the Salt Lake Tribune and/or Deseret News and that’s it.
The pricing is like Priceline bidding except there is more interaction. You get the newspaper’s list price and then you submit a bid. You don’t compete with other advertisers, publishers review your bid and get back to you in a day or two. They can accept, deny, or negotiate on the price. You can send an email to the publisher through the Google interface.
Here’s a quick example: you probably want to run your ad at least 3 times minimum. You select the newspaper(s) and set your budget. You can choose what section you’d like to advertise in. The list price for the paper I chose was around $1200 an ad for a daily (in a mid-size city). Your minimum bid is going to be around $300. Contrast that with a college newspaper that is around $800 with a $170 minimum bid. This is for 2 columns wide and about 11 inches tall (Google recommends at least 10 inches high or if you run smaller ads increase the frequency).
You’ll get an electronic tearsheet - or PDF file of your ad, after it runs.
There is an excellent “Tips for Beginners” section within your account that gives a lot of guidance, research, and advice. The nice thing is you don’t have to sign any agreements or contracts with the paper, like you normally would have to.
Newspapers have high trust and people tend to look at them longer and keep them around. I’d like to experiment advertising my SEO blog writing services that I offer.
If you want to try Google Print ads, you have to sign up for an AdWords account first.
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2 Responses to “Advertising in Newspapers Through Google”
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December 6th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
“Back then I thought I was furthering the cause of our paper, but really I was learning about business and sales with no pressure on me. I wish I’d done even more volunteering like that.”
I bet you were doing both.
December 7th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
The funny thing is it is not available to advertisers from outside of the US. I can contact the paper and place an ad, but cannot do it thru Google, which is kind of strange.
The other trouble is the ad layouts. Their choice is too limited.