Google Print Ads Director Tom Phillips was at again this week at the Newspaper Association of America's annual convention, touting the benefits of the printed newspaper and pushing his own product which has received warm reviews from newspapers that have used it.

Forbes reports that Phillips called newspapers an "underappreciated medium" and warned against comparing Internet page views to print circulations, primarily because of the time spent with the print edition.

“Readers of the [print edition] are reading that newspaper 20 minutes everyday,” said Phillips. “Not cover to cover, but they’re reading a lot of pages. [That represents] a lot of impressions, a lot of news, a lot of information flows, a lot of marketer exposures,” whereas visits to newspaper websites are usually fleeting.

Despite his role of helping newspapers sell ads in print, he emphasized that he believes the future of the newspaper is online. He urged newspapers to innovate online and said that presently they are only tapping a small fraction of the publishing and advertising capabilities that the medium presents.

A few weeks ago, Phillips made a similar speech at INMA's world conference in Paris.

Source: Forbes