Google, Yahoo In Print – Advertising, That Is

Have Google and Yahoo exhausted the world of online advertising? Their latest forays into print might allude to troubles with maintaining the enormous growth they’ve experienced over the past few years. What does this expansion out from the virtual mean for either company?

This shows that both Google and Yahoo will be hanging their ad divisions on their last threads soon. Unless it portends big winnings for the internet powerhouses. It could really fall on either side of the aisle. It’s too soon to tell.

Many have gotten to know the savior of Adsense. With it, bloggers are able to pay their hosting bills. Yahoo! Publisher Network enables individuals the opportunity to garner some cash as well. Google’s Adwords program does just as effective a job with publicizing web pages, large and small. What exactly will print advertising do then?

It is expected that Google and Yahoo won’t be sending banners and towers filled with random items of possible interest to New York Times readers. I predict very targeted steps will be taken, and there will be no “blitz” of any sort. Ads by Google and Yahoo will make subtle inroads into magazines and newspapers. Both companies are rich, but not so much that throwing away billions on a doomed media scheme of enormous size wouldn’t make them so much as shrug their shoulders. They’re going to be smart about it, maintaining a reasonable cost/benefit synchronicity, at least in the early stages of their ventures.

What does this mean for the Web?

Nothing’s going to change. Adsense subscribers will still profit, only it’s possible that, down the line, there may be more options to promote one’s services, software, or goods through Google print ads in a way that’s more financially feasible to small businesses that don’t have the funds to hire ad agencies or broker direct deals with Conde Nast.

What we probably will not be seeing, at least in the near future, are links on paper. If only cheap e-paper was around the corner.