Via John Battelle, a pointer to a Google pilot to auction off surplus space in print magazines. This follows right on the heels of Google's acquisition of a radio-ad insertion platform, which in turn barely follows the pilot phase of a newspaper ad purchase program announced late last year.
What tha? Why is Google haring off after the legacy media, in preference to pushing the net edges? Is this the company's typical 'energetic motion in all directions' style, or something more serious. The latter, I think. There's a real schwerpunkt to this movement:
As the MSM slowly circle the drain of irrelevance, one remaining asset is their ad sales forces. If you're a small business, either local or just too small to warrant the attentions of an agency, the advertising sales calls you get are from the local newspaper, the radio stations, the phone directory, and perhaps print mags that serve your topical market. For a long time, that's been your only way to get the noise out, unless you want to post on kiosks and litter parking lots with flyers.
We all know that programs like AdWords have opened up an alternative path, perhaps best suited to topically focused businesses, but increasingly used for local context as well. So a substantial number of smaller businesses are now buying space online, as well as in legacy. What could be more convenient than to have one stop shopping for their advert needs, perhaps adding in some net-like features like auction pricing and topically relevant placement?
As the mass media cash cows are milked, they've slowly whittled down the newsrooms to ill-disguised opinion writers. But the ads sales forces have been more defended - that's where most of revenue originates. Here comes Google with a nice proposition: Fill up that extra, marginal space with new buyers, without undermining your existing business. Incremental revenue. Give it a try (maybe you don't need all those guys on the phone.) Have this needle. Go to sleep. You won't feel a thing.