Google has opened up its AdWords print ad program to all AdWords publishers, beginning the first auction of adspace in 28 magazines.
The first auction ends February 20, and covers specific issues coming sometime between May and September. The magazines are divided into three categories:
Automotive
Car and Driver
Cycle World
Import Tuner
Motor Trend
Road and Track
Sport Compact Car
Lifestyle
Budget Living
Dwell
Ellegirl
Entrepreneur
Home
Martha Stewart Kids
Martha Stewart Living
Outdoor Photographer
Pregnancy
Women’s Health
Women’s Health & Fitness
Technology
Computer Shopper
Computerworld
CRN
Information Week
InfoWorld
MacAddict
Network Computing
PC Magazine
PC Photo
PC World
OXM – Official Xbox Magazine
bid on full, , and page ad units. The deadline to submit a bid is February 20th, after which your bid will compete against other advertisers’ bids to appear on the publication’s page. Similar to the online AdWords auction, you’ll never pay more than the maximum price you set, and you may end up paying even less. After the auction closes, we’ll contact the winning bidders and work with them to deliver print-ready ads to the relevant publishers. For more information, be sure to check out our FAQ too.
The FAQ shows the ad sizes:
For the moment, you can’t specify the position on the page. Google is running a very big text here, encompassing close to 90 individual magazine issues and an unknown amount of space. If this program is successful, well, I don’t need to tell you how big a deal that could be. The stock market should be watching this one very closely.
UPDATE: Inspired by Philipp, I bid on page ads in every tech publication on the list, on the off chance the bids are actually low. I might bid higher, but I doubt it, unless people want to take up a collection. I guess we could test if print advertising is actually at all useful.
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
Visit the InsideGoogle blog.
