Local Onliner

In a conversation with Newspaper Association of America members this February, Google Local head Shailesh Rao and colleague Jim Kolotouros outlined six Google initiatives that they’d like to work with newspapers on. These include AdSense; a premium tier version of AdSense that enables online order entry for merchants; GoogleLocal; video; GoogleBase; and ongoing experiments with print ads in papers.

Kolotouros said that the initiatives are being developed on an adhoc basis, but that Google would like to put them into “one bucket” to streamline their use by newspapers. Separately, Rao said that Google would like to enable newspapers to act as sales agents for Google to upsell existing customers along the lines of “a model we’ve tested in the Yellow Pages business.”

Highlights of the conversation are transcribed as part of “Getting Serious About Search,” a new survey and report by the NAA’s Melinda Gipson that effectively updates my 2004 survey and report, “Paid Search and Newspapers: Issues and Strategies.”

A major difference for newspapers this time around is a focus on search-as-advertising. Previously, newspapers were just as focused on using search to find articles. The report also zeros in how search impacts ecommerce. This makes total sense, as newspapers are increasingly focused on shopping comparison engines. What it doesn’t deal with are next wave issues that aren’t yet front-and-center for the newspaper industry, such as search and local directory issues, or capturing search results to better target users.

The survey itself, with 95 respondents, has some compelling findings. For instance, newspaper executives believe Google represents a “7” or “8” on the threat scale, and that portals may put “27 percent” of their online revenues at risk — at least according to the median. The survey also found that two-thirds of the respondents won’t upload their classified feeds to Google Base, largely due to competitive fears. On this topic, however, 12 larger papers said they would take their chances.

At the same time, many newspapers continue to work with Google AdSense, and do not necessarily see AdSense itself as an immediate threat. But AdSense’s contribution to the bottom line isn’t especially critical. The majority of respondents who have AdSense say that it represents less than one percent of their online revenue, although a few small to mid-sized papers say it was above 10 percent.