Google Goes Public with Print

Thanks again to John Battelle for pointing out that Google has gone "public" with its program to allow advertisers to buy access (via auction) to print advertising in some very high-profile magazines:

As you may know, as part of Google’s ongoing effort to develop new opportunities for our advertisers, we’ve been running tests of ads in a limited number of print publications. Now, we’re excited to test an auction of ad space in select magazines.

In this test, the control is in your hands: you choose the ad size, set your price, and decide how you’d like to use the space. There’s no risk to you you pay only if you win the auction.

Here’s the page that features Martha Stewart Living.

The catch here is you provide the creative (a barrier for many smaller advertisers). But this is now step 2 (dMarc being step 1) in the process of Google becoming a "unified platform" for media buying — online and off.
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On Day 2 of Drilling Down, we’ll have this relevant panel:

The Future of Local Media Buying: The Integrated Online-Offline Platform
Until recently, online marketing was regarded with skepticism and ambivalence. In 2005, led by paid search, online marketing in general came to be seen as a credible medium. While newspapers and Internet Yellow Pages have long been selling online advertising on their sites (and more recently into broader networks), the Google acquisition of dMarc suggests a potentially new, more integrated online-offline media future. It also directly brings the harsh light of performance-based marketing and Web analytics to a traditional advertising medium. The panelists will discuss these and other recent developments and what the near and long term will hold for online marketing and interactive local media.