While it has gone fairly quiet of late, some of you may remember that Google bought a radio advertisng company some months ago, although no plans have yet been released. Will Google be pushing us towards off-line advertising in the future?
I don't think so, Because the are doing a grate job and leading the online advertising witch making them tons of $$$.
They are already doing radio advertising. My friend works for the local radio monopoly (they own nearly all the local stations), and he says they run a bunch of generic ad spots for national companies but paid through Google.
They're already pushing this. You can advertise in many markets across the nation through Google for radio and newspaper advertising. It's actually a pretty clever business move by Google, as they can supplant ad agencies as a media buyer for many smaller businesses. A lot of people who might not consider radio or newspaper advertising now have access to it in a very low pressure sales environment. I don't know that Google will make a ton of bank with this approach, but it does help solidify their status as the "advertising partner" of many small-medium size businesses. Right now they have all kinds of incentives to start advertising through these programs. If I had a product that I believed radio would be effective for, I'd probably rather go through google than some other media conglomerate.
I'd imagine that Google's radio ad option is attractive to only a very, very small niche of advertisers