Google talks to more newspaper publishers

Google is in talks with several newspaper publishers to sell space in their pages to online clients, reports The Sunday Times. Google Print Ads started in the US mid year and already supplies more than 600 titles. Print Ads is an extension of Google AdWords, which operates as an auction system that lets companies submit bids for the advertising space that appears along specific online word searches. 

But with newspapers there is no auction. Instead advertisers say what they are prepared to pay and the publishers can agree to take or decline the offer. Google then takes a slice of revenue from the deal.

But when will this arrive on Australian shores? Last month SmartCompany asked the new general manager of Google Australia, Karim Temsamani, when Print Ads might come to Australia? His reply: “It’s not something that we’re looking at from an Australian perspective at this stage. The structure of the Australian market is very different and certainly our focus from a management-of-the-business perspective is different in Australia at this stage.”