Google?€™s Print Ad Auction Strategy on Shaky Ground
According to a report just published in Businessweek, Google’s effort to flex its advertising muscle into the print world fizzles.
Google, in an effort to expand its current online business model, auctioned off ad space it had purchased in about two dozen magazines. The well intentioned effort ?€“ intended to be a six-month experiment with buying and reselling print ads was made available to thousands of advertisers.
It appears that that the demand was less than expected. Businessweek sites a couple of examples:
The most notable was BluePenguin Software that spent $3,000 on an ad through Google, which ran in the November issue of Budget Living magazine. BluePenguin offered a 20% discount on its antispyware software to Budget Living readers, so they could better track the ad’s performance. Over one month later, the ad had only generated $181.37 in sales.
There’s a lesson here for some of us and the acronym is ROI.
From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii, this is Brent Norris for The World Organization of Webmasters and The WOW Technology Minute.