Google magazine ad auction falls flat

Google's venture to auction off print ads in magazines, which launched in February, has been one of the biggest disappointments in the last six months, says Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's senior vice president for product management. It fell short of the company's expectations, he told investors and the media during a conference call on Wednesday. (The story was reported in Media Post.)

"That probably hasn't taken off as fast as we would like," said Rosenberg of the initiative, which involved selling small horizontal, banner-like ad units in 26 magazines, including Ellegirl, Motor Trend, and PC World. Rosenberg said that Google in the future would work on "integrating the ads in the medium better."

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that despite the initial experience with print ads, the company intends to expand into other media. "We've talked about the expansion into video and video ads, and eventually into television," he said. "My guess is for each of these new major media initiatives, we'll have a few cycles of trying to find the right combination of advertiser product, targeting product, and business model that really takes off."