• by Shankar Gupta , February 24, 2006

Google's program to sell print ads in consumer magazines moved forward Thursday, when the search giant closed the bidding in an auction for inventory in 26 magazines. Ellegirl, Motor Trend, and PC World, among others, will learn early next week which marketers won print ads.

Jeff Edman--president and CEO of PC World, one of three International Data Group magazines that took part in the pilot--said that the magazine contracted with Google to run three pages of advertising, either all in its next issue, or spread out over three. PC World will have the right to reject any advertisers. He added that Google agreed to refrain from soliciting any advertisers that PC World's own sales team was courting.

Edman said that the Google-sold ads are appearing on pages of PC World that would otherwise run house ads. The advertisers that Google offers, Edman said, are likely ones that his magazine sales team might not have been able to reach on their own. "There's a long tail of advertisers that they have a relationship with who could benefit from print advertising, but they don't have agencies, don't have ad departments, don't have creative," he said. "This is a way to help them get exposure through the print media, which otherwise they would not have."

Still, Edman acknowledged that Google's growing share of ad revenues poses a potential threat to the magazine industry. "Any of the big search engines are getting a share of ad budgets that could potentially go to PC World magazine or PCWorld.com. On the other hand, they drive a lot of traffic to us, and now the fact that they're doing print ads makes it even better for us."