Is Google targeting traditional advertising?

Online media giant flirting with newspapers

Recently Google placed an ad in a few Canadian publications advocating the benefits of buying ads on Google. What is different about these is that they were full-page print ads taken out in a couple of well read newspapers including the The Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest-circulation national paper.

“You know who needs a haircut? People searching for a haircut,” the ad reads. “Maybe that’s why ads on Google work.”

Using mass media to spread the message of ad targeting is an interesting concept. Google had already discontinued its Print Ads service they used to offer themselves, instead directing users towards the many ad types offered through its AdWords service. Earlier in the year, Google ran a series of print ads in its “Good to Know” campaign in several large print publications such as as USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker to help curb concern over the collection of personal data.

Is this Google’s way of saying that print is dead, ushering people to hop on the AdWords bandwagon, or is does this reinforce traditional advertising as an important outlet even for one of the largest online ad networks in the world?