{"id":682,"date":"2006-11-06T11:02:01","date_gmt":"2006-11-06T15:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/11\/06\/can-google-make-print-work-this-time\/"},"modified":"2006-11-06T11:02:01","modified_gmt":"2006-11-06T15:02:01","slug":"can-google-make-print-work-this-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/11\/06\/can-google-make-print-work-this-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Google make print work this time?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In newspaper boardrooms across the United States, the news that Google wants to get into<\/a> the print advertising business is probably causing a mix of emotions — a combination of those old favourites, fear and greed. Fear because newspapers are afraid that Google might somehow make it even less profitable to run a paper than it already is, and greed because Google is so ridiculously successful that it’s natural to wonder whether some of that might spill over.<\/p>\n

Forgotten by many in their excitement to board the Google party train, however (typical newspaper guy: “Does this mean we all get Segways and free candy?”) is the fact that the search behemoth has already tried this particular strategy once, and more or less… well, failed<\/a>. Google ran a trial project involving a couple of dozen high-profile magazines, and before too long it became obvious that it just wasn’t working. Google said it was just an experiment, and that it learned a lot.<\/p>\n

\"newspaper\"<\/p>\n

Why didn’t it work? Mike Masnick at Techdirt had a few clues<\/a>: For one thing, Google doesn’t really bring any kind of competitive edge to the print advertising game the way it does to Internet search-related advertising, where its giant algorithm machine spins a web that drags Internet surfers in like flies and practically forces them to click on ads whether they want to or not. In magazines (and newspapers), there’s no algorithm-powered search, and no search-related ads.<\/p>\n

If nothing else, meanwhile, Google’s desire to move into newspaper ads — which it apparently thinks are a better fit than magazines — is yet another signal of its unquenchable thirst for ad inventory of any kind, so that it can keep growing at those triple-digit rates the stock market is so enamoured with. And let’s face it: the newspaper business needs all the help it can get. Although Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 points out that<\/a> one of the unintended consequences of the Google experiment could be that it only reinforces how disconnected and hard to measure print advertising really is. <\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In newspaper boardrooms across the United States, the news that Google wants to get into the print advertising business is probably causing a mix of emotions — a combination of those old favourites, fear and greed. Fear because newspapers are afraid that Google might somehow make it even less profitable to run a paper than … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Can Google make print work this time?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}