• Ad Age, Tuesday, March 13, 2007 11:15 AM

Google's effort to help small and medium-size advertisers buy media like newspaper space and radio spots appears to be a success. And while that may be no surprise, oddly enough, the newspaper and radio folks aren't the least bit spooked. Indeed, Google may have finally built what years of complaining by media-buying agencies couldn't: a viable, scalable, e-business approach to buying local media.

And if early trends hold, Google may yet prove itself in the biggest ad market it hasn't touched: television. TV executives are watching the trials for signs of success before they let Google in for a taste of their $68 billion business. They say they need to find out if it can bring new small and medium-size advertisers to offline media.

But after some limited experiments with newspapers and magazines over the past couple of years, Google began a serious test of its Print Ads system in November, letting more than 100 advertisers bid for space in more than 50 daily newspapers. Results suggest Google is in newspapers' $46 billion ad market to stay.

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