Google Cancels Print Ads

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At 3:12pm ET, I received a story from Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal saying that Google is canceling it's print ad service. This was a service I was just starting to talk with clients about, so it is unfortunate for us. We recently discovered that some of the largest news papers at the state and city level were not represented, which limited this service's usefulness to us. But we had planned to use it to manage campaigns in smaller, more rural areas with small papers, but were still areas where my clients happened to have strong brand. We also saw value in having the service integrated with our Google adword campaigns (search engine advertising).

According to Jessica E. Vascellaro of the Wall Street Journal, Google is "saying the effort was not as effective as it had hoped and citing the need to focus its resources on more promising products."

Other facts:
- The service will stop Feb. 28.
- This seems to be part of a larger effort by Google to shut down any services not currently successful and focus the company on maintaining growth in its core areas.

Other services recently shut down:
- Google Notebook, a service for saving Web pages
- a catalog search product
- a virtual-world service

This also raises questions about whether they will shut down their other traditional media services, mainly radio and television. If so, this would be a pretty big shift from their not-so-old effort of using these traditional channels to move beyond their online advertising platform and diversify their service offering. Their online advertising services still account for about 97% of their revenue.