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The weekly shopping guide publisher PennySaverUSA.com, part of Harte Hanks Inc., inked a deal with Google that could turn the publisher's thousands of sales reps into AdWords sellers.

Google Flips PennySaver With Ad Deal

When the PennySaver deal was formally announced during a New Orleans meeting of the Association of Free Community Papers, Classified Intelligence elicited this money quote from a PennySaver representative:

"This could give Google the ‘feet on the street’ it needs to explain its AdWords service to local advertisers, and give the advertisers help reaching their customers through Google."

Such a need for feet on the street looked inevitable, if Google wanted to grow its local search advertising and other products (though AdWords is the main one) with the base of potential customers who are currently using Google for paid search.

Google didn't want to build that kind of network of sales representatives, when a deal with Harte Hanks' PennySaver could accomplish a rapid partnership and gain them access to a far-flung sales staff. Classified Intelligence cited one Google local sales executive in attendance as saying, "They have the relationships with the local stores and advertisers; we have the reach and the products."

The deal has been in quiet operation for several weeks, with an impact on several Google properties. The report noted the following:

• A feed of PennySaverUSA's 1.3 million listings has been delivering them to Google Base. Searchers who find them travel to the newspaper's site.
• A feed of their "power pages," highly detailed local ads, delivered to Google Maps. Those pages can include elements like coupons; even better, the merchant is spared the effort of moving a print coupon to a usable one on Maps.
• A possible expansion of Google's 'bid for print' ads that they have been testing with over four dozen newspapers.

"With hundreds or thousands more participating newspapers, Google could become a powerhouse agency providing print-ad sales to large and small advertisers who want bargain space in daily and non-daily publications," the report said.

Other aspirants to local online advertising success, like Yahoo and Microsoft among many, will have a lot to think about as they head home from SES New York tonight.