Google hands advertising to the PR industry

The search engine giant is in talks with several newspaper publishers to sell space in their pages to its online clients, reports The Times.

Google Print Ads is an extension of Google AdWords, the auction system that lets companies bid for a slot that appears alongside specific online word searches.

Instead of an auction, advertisers pick a newspaper online through Google and enter a bid for available advertising space on a given page and day.

But rather than offering to pay the list price, customers say what they are prepared to pay. Publishers can choose to accept or decline the offer.

This changes the nature of PR. Lets suppose there is a big story breaking, why not bid for an advertisement on the page? Advertising would then be driven by editorial and PR generated editorial to boot.

Is this the end of advertising as we know it?

Now, lets take the argument a bit further.

Why not use the same technique in others online PR content?