Google is currently in a beta with a few customers for a mobile circular ad product, according to an interview with Surojit Chatterjee, Google's leader of product management for search and location-based mobile ads.

Chatterjee told investor Business Daily that the search engine giant is using feeds from the businesses about their weekly circulars as part of the beta. "One example is Best Buy. Every week they have products in a booklet that" they mail to customers.

A Growing Space

Google is pushing into this space as another project launches.  The Associated Press and 40 newspapers recently debuted a pilot mobile advertising project called iCircular. The service enhances newspapers’ advertising circulars with location-specific offers and interactive tools. It is rolling out to the mobile sites and apps of 40 major newspapers. The mobile advertising service will appear under a "Deals" section on each of these newspapers’ apps and mobile sites.

Sunday Still Drives Weekly Product Cycle - Even Online

It is clear why vendors and publishers are seeking to digitize this channel: the Sunday circulars and coupons are a main reason why it is the most popular day of the week for newspapers.

Consumers, it appears, have been trained to behave similarly on that day online as well, a blog post from Compete notes.  Despite the steady drop in newspaper readers, consumers still flock to retailers' sites such as Target or Best Buy to check for coupons on Sunday, Compete found.

"Based on the huge spikes in traffic on Sundays, it appears that consumer awareness of Sunday as the start of a new week of sales still appears to be strong. Sunday is one of the busiest days for consumers to visit both sites."