Google Audio...Wow

I just got off the phone with a really pumped up guy. And for good reason...(his "pumpy-ness" not getting off the phone...) goggle has acquired, tweaked and repackaged another amazing tool that continues its march towards world wide disintermediation in the advertising and marketing space. Enter google Audio as hosted on today's call by Jogn Breen, sales executive formerly (I think) with dMark Broadcasting Inc. the creator of this technology.

Still in its Google Infancy stage (push the baby into some traffic and see how he does...roll it now perfect it later...)this tool should be very exciting for national and regional agencies and bigger in-house media buyers of radio.

To cut to the chase, it speeds-up and simplifies the task of managing these budgets in a big way. Read the powerpoint linked below for more info on that piece of it.

Even though Johnny was REALLY excited about the scheduling and "optimization" aspects of the platform, I was and remain more interested in the little guy aspect of the story.

You see, if a pizza restaurant owner wants to go radio today, he has to get the creative done, decide which stations to buy and roll the dice. Heavy on radio sales person advice maybe not so heavy on actual data that may be more effective at guiding the buy that a commission-based piece of advice, "buddy." This new system allows for an end to end creation, placement and reporting from the comfort of your own Pizza restaurant back office.

John did say that unlike SpotRunner (similar service for placing TV buys that DOES boast a VERY impressive library of TV spots that they will customize for the Pizza guy's restaurant...) they are not expected to become a "$300 - $400" spot agency. (However he did tell me that they do do some simple VO stuff for small clients now that ARE priced within that range.)

This will be interesting. I was hoping it would become an easy way for the small guy to get a great deal through bidding on last minute avails. He was not so sure. He did seem pretty certain that for the larger advertisers the system would ad to their efficiency by reducing time to manage and the spot rates would be "very competitive."

So America, are you ready to have Google "do" your radio buys now too?

Contact John Directly...

John Breen l Google
604 Arizona Avenue l Santa Monica, CA l 90401
Office: 310.460.4018 l Cell: 310.694.2519
Email: jbreen@google.com

PowerPoint on Google Audio HERE