Desktop (National Radio) Publishing

Thanks again to Joe Cappo’s The Future of Advertising for this quote by Keith Reinhard, Chairman and CEO of DDB Worldwide Communications Group inc.,

“Let’s face it. We made a mistake a hundred years ago. We should have never been paid on the basis of how much media we bought. And when we asked the client if they needed a little help writing and ad, and we did it for nothing, it was a mistake.”

Enter Google’s AdWords Radio. Just as post script and post script printers helped to enable the casual computer user to be a publisher, Google Radio Ads (now in beta) is ripping yet another facet of the business from the hands of commission-based advertising agencies, by allowing the casual computer user to be a national broadcaster.

The way it works is that you create an audio advertisement, help is available through the Google AdWords site, choose the market or demographics and choose the days and times, and then your audio clip will be played on one of the radio stations that participates (part of the Arbitron Inc. network).

The best part is being able to track effectiveness. A fundamental problem with traditional broadcast advertising is measuring how many people actually perform your desired action from hearing your message? Google’s AdWords radio can track a lot of information on when it’s played, etc. By creating a clever radio ad, tracking web data, and correlating determined conversions, a company can best choose how to spend its ad dollars, and what works best.

Next step? Probably with Google using the same AdWords formula with television advertisements. Why are ad agencies even needed? (Hopefully, the answer is for its creativity and marketing capabilities to create an effective message to be disseminated to the masses.)

Thoughts?