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March 12, 2007
Understand Radio Advertising, Google Audio, Before You Try To Revolutionize It
The radio advertising world can learn a lot from Mark Ramsey's recent post. There's almost too much to comment on, so for the sake of time, we'll list out the most beneficial points:
Google Audio is using a form of "black box" advertising, which only benefits Google, not advertisers or radio stations. Google Audio national director of sales Drew Hilles said "one way they help preserve a station's rate card integrity is by allowing buyers to pick markets -- but not individual stations." Bad move. Clients are rightfully leery of hidden information that their advertising dollars paid for.
"Radio's ability to target makes it effective." Our favorite quote of the year, of the decade, is now
"12+ is a family reunion, not an effective radio buy."
We've been saying the same for the demo Adults 18+.
"A 50% commission rate is good for Google. Not radio stations. " We'd add radio advertisers to the list of people that a 50% commission rate is not good for. "...please let me know where a sales person can earn 50% commission. We all want to work there! (Google charges 50% for every dollar they bring to radio. [most radio agencies] gives the station 85% of the buy.)"
Big companies so often get the small things wrong. How does that happen? Maybe it's because once you start getting business because you're big, you don't have to be as good.
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Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, Dan Ariely
Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell
Made to Stick, Heath & Heath
The Power of Persuasion, Robert Levine
Influence: Science & Practice, Cialdini
Words That Work, Frank Lutz
My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising, Claude C. Hopkins
Or Your Money Back, Alvin Eicoff
Being Direct, Lester Wunderman
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Comments
Guys,
Your comments are correct if Google is selling its ads to traditional radio advertisers, but that isn't Google's business model. So your criticism isn't really relevant.
While selling to the low-hanging fruit of radio advertisers may be true initially for dMarc and Google as it has taken the service over, their stated goal (and the only one that really makes sense for them in the long run) is to use dMarc to sell advertising to their own Adsense advertisers, which, you can be sure, aren't really radio advertisers.
Google has at least some level of optimism, as the response from their newsprint trial (running concurrently with the dMarc rollout) has generated some positive feedback from Adsense advertisers.
On the other hand, the mechanics of their radio product are already screwed up--they are having a hard time getting inventory, and they are needing to "train" Adsense advertisers on how to buy and what to expect from radio advertising. So the efficiencies aren't there.
We'll see if Google figures it out, but you can be sure that the comments that Fig stated on Ramsey's site and you repeat above are of absolutely no concern to them.
Posted by: Jim Kerr | March 13, 2007 11:47 AM