Google enters into the world of print for ad sales

: Google, which built a lucrative business in online advertising, has found a new medium for its ad sales: print. The company is buying ad space in magazines and filling it with half a dozen ads from clients of its vast online system.

The first incarnation of Google’s program resembles an old-fashioned business known as ad brokering, which has largely been shunned by major publishers.

Google said that the program was a test and declined to elaborate. But its executives have indicated that they see their rapidly growing online advertising business extending to other media forms. And some marketers see this as a first step.

“This is probably a test of whether advertisers are willing to see Google as a place to get all kinds of advertisements rather than just online,” said Kevin Lee, the chief executive of did-it.com, a search marketing firm. Google is buying ad space in several specialized publications, including PC Magazine and Maximum PC.

For now, Google is charging advertisers a fixed fee to be included in the print positions, but some in the industry predict that it may ultimately experiment with auctioning off space and perhaps set rates based on the number of responses to an ad, as measured by calls to a certain phone number or visits to a Web site.

Jason Young, the president of Internet and consumer-technology publications for Ziff-Davis, the publisher of PC Magazine, said the program allowed the magazine to sell ads to smaller businesses than it could reach before.

“We’re thrilled for PC Magazine in print to be presented to Google’s fantastic base of hundreds of thousands of smaller advertisers,” he said.

Nicholas Longo, the chief executive of CoffeeCup Software, said a phone solicitation from Google led him to purchase an ad for placement in PC Magazine. CoffeeCup, which makes Web design software and offers a service to help Web sites secure listings in search engines, is a heavy user of Google’s advertising, but has not spent much on magazine advertising in the past.

He said he jumped at Google’s offer, however, because his ad for SubmitFire would be on a page identified as having been placed by Google.

“It’s almost like Coca-Cola calling and saying they want to put you on the back of the bottle,” he said.Moreover, he said Google offered an ad rate far less than PC Magazine would charge for the same space.

He would not specify the rate, but PC...