“Newspapers to Test Plan to Sell Ads on Google”
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/business/media/newspapers-to-test-plan-to-sell-ads-on-google.html?searchResultPosition=7
This article reported Google’s move to extend its advertisements selling to newspapers. Although it was published a long time ago, I still think this is very interesting and worth discussing.
Google has a huge market share of online advertising and it wants to take the newspaper advertisement market as well. Although newspapers are declining, many businesses still try to publish advertisements on paper newspapers, especially local newspapers. Ad spots on the newspapers are not fully utilized because of their limited access to potential advertisers. With Google, they can display advertisement spots online and allow more potential customers to see them. The procedure is like this: advertisers choose specific dates and the section they want to advertise on, and enter a bid. Unlike auctions for digital advertisements, the difference is that newspapers are not selling a specific ad place but they can choose to accept the bids or not. This is because newspapers usually do not know how much space is left until the last second.
I think it is very interesting to witness adjustments that all of the stakeholders involved need to do. First, Google probably needs to make more adjustments because the “auction” turns to be more random. Bidding the highest prices now does not guarantee a spot. Dates and the size of your advertisements might matter more. Then it comes to the advertisers. Is bidding truthfully still the best strategy? I’m not sure about the answer but I believe it is more complicated. More factors are entangled including space and dates. It would be interesting to analyze this semi-auction and what strategies advertiser should choose.