Google Goes Old School

What's black and white with "Ads by Google" all over? Going by Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) latest advertising foray, the answer is "print media." The search king has broadened its reach to the offline world in a clever strategy that involves taking out a full page of ad space in tech-friendly periodicals such PC Magazine and Maximum PC and then filling up the space with four to six ads from its contextual advertising clients.

Google isn't exactly duplicating its wildly popular AdWords contextual marketing product, but it apparently tapped many of its existing paid-search sponsors to get this venture off the ground.

The print-ad blocks have some features that you won't find on the online platform -- things like color graphics, more than three lines of promo copy, and telephone numbers. That last point is important because in the print world, cumbersome URLs are forgotten while a phone number is a great invitation to pursue a sponsored offering further.

Going by the related URL on the PC Magazine advertising area, just one of the five original advertisers from the Sept. 6 issue is being featured again in the Sept. 20 issue. CNET (Nasdaq: CNET) broke the story last week, contacting one of the advertisers that paid a reasonably cheap $1,000 for a wide ad at the bottom of the page.

This may seem like a stupid move by Google. It's not. It's brilliant, really. On the surface, it appears as if Google is trying to package some of its sponsors in a way to reach magazine readers. Then again, it's safe to say that just about every single subscriber to a computer magazine is already online. That's why this move seems to have a greater purpose -- to lure future advertisers by showing that Google's reach transcends the wired realm. By positioning itself along traditional print advertising, Google is likely hoping that more conventional branding efforts may translate to gains in paid search.

Google didn't just sublet a billboard. It subsidized its own marketing agenda along the way.

This doesn't mean that its online peers, such as Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), or Infospace (Nasdaq: INSP), will follow suit. That would seem too obvious at this point. However, just as edgy smaller players have turned to innovation -- consider Miva's (Nasdaq: MIVA) Pay-Per-Call idea -- it's just another comforting sign: As big as Google is, it's still willing to take chances by cutting against the grain.

It's that kind of thinking that drives the stock picks singled out in our Rule Breakers newsletter service, although Rule Breakers aims to find smaller growth stock opportunities than gargantuan Google -- like recent recommendation CNET.

Nicely done, Google. There's nothing wrong with getting a little print ink on those fingers.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz digs Google, but he does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story. The Fool has a disclosure policy. Rick is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.