Even Google Can’t Save The Newspapers
Jan 21
Things aren’t looking good for newspapers. Despite making a valiant (or ironic?) effort to save the newspapers, this week Google announced that it will discontinue the Google Print Ads program on February 28th, 2009, allowing advertisers who have already purchased ad space to see their ads run through March 31st.
Spencer Spinnell, Director of Google Print Ads comments in the blog post announcement, “While we hoped that Print Ads would create a new revenue stream for newspapers and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, the product has not created the impact that we — or our partners — wanted.”
The program was designed to allow the hundreds of thousands of Google Adwords advertisers to conveniently buy excess ad inventory from daily newspapers, in theory giving the newspapers a big revenue boost. Ironically, the newspapers are desperately in need of a revenue boost because most of their advertisers have moved thier ad dollars online, realizing that their newspaper ads were less effective than their online ads. So really, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why this program failed.
Will they bailout the newspapers and just buy them? According to a Fortune magazine interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, no:
“The good news is we could purchase them. We have the cash. But I don’t think our purchasing a newspaper would solve the business problems. It would help solidify the ownership structure, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem in the business.”
Well folks, at least we know they could do it, if they wanted to. And as usual, there is a funnier version of this story at Valleywag.
Jan 22 at 08:44
Last year I wrote a research paper on a company named AdStar that was trying to help newspapers make the transition to online classifieds. Most of the major papers were receptive but slow to embrace the concept. It’s only a matter of time…
http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/
Jan 23 at 16:48
As if anyone could save the newspapers or our local news channels. Innovation = a step forward; let the weak die… but give me a job with the strong, please.
Feb 17 at 10:43
[...] we’ve all heard by now that Google is finished trying to save the newspapers, but others haven’t given up hope. Time Magazine published an [...]