What Google is on the precipice of teaching us is a new business model.
Google isn’t as interested in selling advertising on its own site as it is in selling ads on everyone else’s. It wants to be the one-stop shop for buying ads anywhere, including your local market.
So my suggestion, for the rebellious among us, is to out-AdSense them. And then one-up Google in a move they’ll refuse to match.
First, recognize that Google’s right. Advertisers do want one business they can use for placing all ads. To put it in terms from the Innovator’s Dilemma, it’s a job that advertisers need done for them.
With the future creation of open-source advertising standards, anyone will be able to sell any ad, anywhere. In fact, sounds like the perfect slogan: “Any ad. Anywhere.”
Newspapers should be the local proxy. If someone wants to sell shoes in your market, then the newspaper should be where they go to place local ads. Set up an ad network like Google AdSense. Local Web sites can post your network ads and get paid per click. Local newspapers can print your ads and get a portion of the revenue. Same goes for local broadcast programs.
To participate, the content-provider will be required to supply demographic information about its audience. That gives the newspaper robust knowledge about the local market and how to best use each product to connect advertisers with buyers.
Newspapers will gain a new position of expertise and a new competitive advantage over Google. Here comes the one-up. For high-end advertisers, the job of newspaper reps becomes creating a campaign from scratch and selling it to the advertiser, much like advertising firms do now.
It will be fruitful for newspapers to act as advertising firms because eventually that’s what their new customers will want.
Your goal is becoming the local expert on how to buy premium space, how to create an effective campaign across multiple media. Be a boutique in person and a one-stop shop online for the local DIY advertiser.

