Google Inc. is expanding a test program that lets online advertisers buy ad space in newspapers, as the publishing industry struggles to offset business that has moved to the Internet. An initial test phase of Print Ads was launched by Google last November, linking about 100 advertisers with over 50 newspapers. Late Tuesday the Mountain View company stated that it will open the program to the "hundreds of thousands" of U.S. advertisers and agencies that use its online ad platform, AdWords. Newspaper publishers including Hearst Corp., The New York Times Co. and E.W. Scripps Co., have increased the number of daily newspapers involved in this project to 225.

"We did see some new advertisers come in through the original test,now we really need to see whether there really, really are advertisers (who are) going to jump in here and bring us new business." said Gannett Co. spokeswoman Tara Connell.
Google's technology automates the billing and payment cycles thus making the self-serve web-based program suitable for companies with little or no experience with print advertising.