This was touched on when Google announced another trial of print ads on Monday, but the search behemoth will also launch a trial of radio ads by the end of the year that could help it muscle in on the $20 billion radio ads market in the US.
Advertisers could sign up for audio ads alongside web ads when they sign in to the AdWords system. This would be implemented through dMarc Broadcasting, an automated radio ads service Google agreed to purchase in January this year for around $1 billion.
Google will begin testing audio ads by the end of 2006, according to a report by Reuters, and could grow its audio advertising, sales and engineering department to a thousand employees in time. That's extremely significant, given that the Google empire currently employs just over 9,300.
If that's not enough, Google is also reported to be sniffing around the Clear Channel radio station operator. Analyst David Bank of RBC Capital Markets is quoted by Reuters as saying that "it looks like Google is acquiring critical mass in anticipation of a major acquisition of inventory".
I asked Google when this would be extended to the UK and the answer was that there is nothing new to announce at the moment. But it's safe to assume that they will roll this out over here if the US trial works out, and the UK tends to be 12 months behind the States.
Is this good news for broadcasters, who will get to share a bit of that huge AdWords revenue - or is this a bit more suspicious?
kdawson on Slashdot: "The company is hiring 'scores' of radio sales people in major markets and is offering them 50% above prevailing salaries."
Lord Helmet on MOG: "Google has been snapping up top shelf radio sales specialists in a number of high profile markets such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. As many as one hundred have been retained thus far... With no real radio outlets for these salespeople to sell advertising for, it begs the question as to what Google's intentions may be."
Danny Sullivan on the Search Engine Watch blog: "I still find myself amazed that Google is doing absolutely nothing in terms of podcasts. Online video, it can't do enough about, in hopes of grabbing ad money. But online audio it seems content to ignore, instead heading off into offline audio with radio. Setting up Google Audio feels like a missed opportunity."
