Adam T. Sutton

Google Turns Off the Radio — Too Bad!

February 19th, 2009

Google Audio Ads — a service that sells broadcast radio advertising over the Web — will end on May 31.  We covered how marketers were using the AdWords-based system for airing ads across the country at a low cost. I thought it was an interesting service that illustrated the breadth of Google’s advertising ambitions.

The marketers we talked to for the article thought the service was much cheaper and easier than buying ads direct from radio stations.

Steven Wagner, President, Kudzu Consultancy, one of my sources for the original story, had stopped using Audio Ads in December, mainly because his clients didn’t need them, he says. But that does not mean he did not enjoy the service.

“It was a great deal…We still saw that big markets, or even niches, were incredibly effective and cost effective…It was so simple. It took something that was so difficult and inefficient at times and made it so easy,” Wagner says.

“Someone at the corporate level could, through a Web browser, buy radio advertising at a discount without the need of an agency to do the media buying.”

Wagner says he’ll miss the product — but will he still be advertising on the radio?

“Nope. Definitely not…It’s too much of a hassle, and you’d be paying a premium.”

It sounds like Google just closed a cheap advertising gateway.

Adam T. Sutton

About Adam T. Sutton

Adam T. Sutton, Senior Reporter, MarketingSherpa
Adam generates content for MarketingSherpa's Email and Inbound Marketing newsletters. His years of experience in interviewing marketers and conveying their insights has spanned topics such as search marketing, social media marketing, ecommerce, email and more. Adam previously powered the content behind MarketingSherpa's Search and Consumer-marketing newsletters and carries that experience into his new role. Today, in addition to writing articles, he contributes content to the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa blogs, as well as MECLABS webinars, workshops and summits.

Prior to joining MarketingSherpa, Adam was the Managing Editor at the Mequoda group. There he created content and promotions for the company's daily email newsletter and managed its schedule.

Categories: Media Buying Tags: , ,



  1. February 19th, 2009 at 23:35 | #1

    Yes, it was cheap, but I always wondered how effective it was. The beauty of Google is that you can tie marketing spend to results, tracking inbound leads all the way through to sales.

    Although the Audio Ads program provided economy of scale, I think marketers weren’t quite convinced to jump into “old” media, just because it was provided as a service by a new media company.

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