I've mentioned my feelings on Google Newspaper Ads several times in the past.  Basically, I don't see how the system will ever work.  Furthermore, I don't see it ever amounting to much.  I think Google and the advertisers in the test are focusing too much on the short-term prize and not as much on the long-term viability of the system.  As I said in my previous post on the topic, I'll be surprised if this system works well when it expands beyond the limited number of the initial tests.

On Wednesday, PPC Discussions posted some first-hand numbers from the test.  The author of the post is one of the participants in the pilot program and had this to say about the results so far:

So overall the newspaper test delivered a small set of visitors who had metrics that were below average when compared to PPC traffic.

In particular, he said that the traffic delivered by the ad was low, newspaper ad visitors generated 70% fewer page views, and spent 30% less time at the site than average.  Those visitors did, however, register for the site at a rate almost identical to visitors coming from PPC ads.  The author plans to continue using the system for the time being but goes on to say that ads would have to be inexpensive to make them a viable option.

Honestly, those numbers are little better than I would have thought.  But am I surprised that they were low?  Not at all.