Google is expanding again. The company announced yesterday that it is acquiring yet another advertising company. Shocking. (Not really.) But what is surprising is that this acquisition, dMarc, is radio-based. It’s offline. Again, still not all that shocking: Google has been making strides into traditional advertising, with print advertising already being tested.
With all the momentum happening in online media, why would Google want to go into old media, where margins are low and often so is morale? Especially in the radio business, where the growth of portable music players and satellite radio have been eating away at the audience for traditional radio. Will Google make an impact on the diminishing radio industry?
Personally, I just don't believe Google can make enough of a difference to sustain the incredible shrinking radio market. They must have bigger plans in the works, perhaps using dMarc's resources on Internet radio and podcasts. In which case, traditional radio becomes merely a proving ground for their advertising model, before Google expands it to online venues.
Do you think Google wants to save radio advertising? Or are they looking to the future?
Related Stories: | Topics:Management, advertising + PR, Google Inc., Media Sector, Broadcast Media, Radio Broadcasting and Production, Advertising and Related Services |
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Recent Comments | 4 Total
January 18, 2006 at 7:45pm by Alan Nelson
"Looking to the future," but not as I think you mean. When the tech bubble burst many AOL/Time Warner merger critics clammed up because Steve Case's decision to buy buy some tangible equity suddenly looked smart. When clicks crash, bricks have some value. It's only one man's opinion, but I see the dMarc acquisition as a hedge.
January 19, 2006 at 11:30am by Alex Osterwalder
Google knows a lot about people simply by analyzing what people search for. Have a look at Google Zeitgeist and you'll understand that they know what's going on:
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist2005.html
By knowing these kind of trends they could expand to a range of offline businesses beyond readio simply because they understand the signs of the time. But that might not be their business model. However, knowing that Google heavily relies on data when making business decisions I doubt this move is not part of a clear strategy...
January 19, 2006 at 1:59pm by Joe
I think Google is looking toward the future of both the Radio advertising market and the online market (podcasts and such).
I think Google's advertising is much less profile based as it is content based and think that may transfer well to other markets. They could indeed revolutionize radio advertising if they could place contextually relevent ads in a talk show.
It will be a fun couple of years as we discover Google's advertising prowess.
January 20, 2006 at 11:01am by Patrick McLean
While commecial radio terribly obsolecent right now - the medium of audio is not. To paraphrase a famous copywriter, "People don't listen to radio, the listen to what interests them, and sometimes it's radio."
The filter that commerical radio puts on content isn't very interesting - so people don't listen. But the place in our lives that audio fills, be it in the car or in earbuds, is clearly growing.
As a semi-reformed copywriter and creator of radio advertising, I don't think traditional :30 and :60 ads are going to work anymore. But interesting content in an audio format - well, why can't that work? And how do you incoporate a commercial mesage in that content? Be it music or spoken word.
Bravo to Google for taking the bull squarely by the horns. And good luck. Radio, audio and the internet is surely typified by my favorite Chinese Curse: May you live in interesting times.