Google started small: A few inches of ads in the Chicago Tribune, some quarter-page units in Budget Living and PC Magazine. That was in August.

Fast forward to Q1 2006 and the Mountain View behemoth is crossing into media buyers' turf, signing up a roster of 28 consumer magazines to expand its print ad placement services. Google buys chunks of ad pages in books like Martha Stewart Living and Women’s Health, then auctions them off to the highest bidder. No longer relegated to the back alleys of the Internet, Google is going glossy like American OK! wishes it hadn't.

The size of ads its now offering has expanded as well, moving from fractional classifieds to quarter, half and full-page placements.

Google’s strategy is in no way tied to the interactive realm, said Tim Armstrong, VP-advertising. “We have a set of advertisers that could benefit from being in another medium,” he said at the Software & Information Industry Association conference in New York this month. “At a certain point, Google is agnostic to media.”

Though we're hoping the search giant remain's true to its contextual advertising roots so, at long last, we might get some relevant ads in ELLEgirl.

No more L'oreal and Revlon ads for the fraction of pre-teen girls reading the mag. It's time for some escort service and 900 numbers to find their way in — to reach the Hachette Filipacchi title's true readers: 40-year-old married men unhappy with their marriages with a hankering for their daughter's junior high friends.

No wonder Magazine Publishers of America is on board, though it doesn't hurt that the org's chairman, Jack Kliger, is also CEO of Hachette.

GOOGLE PRINT AD BROKER SYSTEM EXPANDS [Kris Oser, AdAge]