Google teams with PennySaver in ad, content sharing deal
Google and PennySaverUSA.com are working on a deal in which free "shopper" publications would contribute classified listings to Google's search index and add local merchant pages with coupons to Google Maps, according to a consultant who heard a presentation on the deal at an industry conference.
The companies also are talking about running a "bid-for-print" advertising test between PennySaverUSA.com's parent Harte Hanks and Google. Under the deal, Google also could end up training sales reps at the "shopper" publications to sell AdWords to offline merchants that Google otherwise would have a hard time reaching, says Peter Zollman, principal of Classified Intelligence, a consultancy in the classified and local advertising industry.
Zollman says the information came from a presentation that Loren Dalton, PennySaverUSA.com president, gave Thursday at a meeting of the Association of Free Community Papers trade group in New Orleans. A Google director of local sales confirmed the information, he said.
Representatives from Google and PennySaverUSA.com and its parent company, Harte Hanks, did not return e-mails and phone calls seeking comment.
Google "doesn't want to build a sales army and this is a way for them to latch onto a sales army of locally focused small and midsized publications that are out selling every day to the merchants they want to reach," Zollman said.
Google already is using its AdWords auction system to sell ads that appear in more than 60 newspapers. The company is aggressively moving into offline advertising markets, pushing its automated online ad auction system to traditional media.
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
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