Google will sell print ads for the Journal Register Co.'s
New Haven Register, under a deal between the two companies announced Thursday.
With the partnership, the New
Haven Register joins a roster of more than 50 newspapers nationwide, including papers published by Gannett, the Tribune Company, The New York Times Company, the Washington Post Company, and
Hearst, to outsource some ad sales duties to Google.
Launched in beta at the end of last
month, Google's pilot print ad sales program has so far performed better than expected, according to James Conaghan, the Newspaper Association of America vice president for business analysis and
research. Speaking last week at the UBS global media conference, Conaghan said that it
took Google just three weeks to sell all of the inventory it had expected to in the program's initial three months.
The company earlier this year attempted to sell print ads in magazines, including Car and Driver,
Budget Living, and PC World. That effort, however, didn't meet Google's expectations. In May, Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president for product management, told analysts and the media the venture has been one of the biggest recent disappointments.
Google rival Yahoo also recently began forging deals with more than 175
newspapers--including ones owned by the Journal Register Co.--but to power online job ads rather than to sell print ads. The Yahoo deal allows the newspapers' help wanted advertisers to post
classifieds on Yahoo HotJobs.