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Google Jumps into Radio Advertising
Luke PiWalker writes "Just days after Microsoft announced its online advertising entry, Google has announced their entry into the radio industry. Google announced today that it has signed a deal to purchase dMarc Broadcasting Inc. for a cool $102 million. The deal will allow Google to enhance its presence in the advertising industry over to the radio industry. What's even more interesting is that Google says it plans to integrate its highly successful AdSense program with those from dMarc. The Google and dMarc deal is expected to close at the end of the first quarter, 2006."
and in other news...
People who didn't read this yesterday (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/17/18132 01) happily thank you for the reminder.
...of this breaking news, try reading this popular news forum.
Hey! I've figured the problem. They forgot to specify 'unique' in the 'title' column definition of the 'articles' table in the slashdot db.
(To be fair to ScuttleMonkey, this is a dupe of an article at least 24 hours old.)
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
...this has no effect on the Pluto probe!
Czech language for absolute beginners
The article submitters site uses hideous floating graphics, and flickering gifs that follow your cursor. It may scar your web design skills for life.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Crap crap, Google isnt on the front page anymore!
QUICKLY! REPOST BEFORE ANYONE NOTICES!
A lot of googles success to date has been because it was a small(ish) lithe
fleet footed company that managed to wrongfoot the large sluggish opposition
corporations such as MS that find it almost impossible to make snap decisions.
However recently google seems to be putting lots of fingers in lots of pies
and getting rather fat. I'm wondering how long before this golden child of
the dot come revolution turns into yet the type of fat bloated corporation
that its founders we so successful in outdoing....
So, is Slashdot just a news syndication site now? Of Itself?
Martin Fink tells it like it is:
The question is NOT why you should post dupes to slashdot, but WHY NOT?
Who knew "Opposites Attract" was written about Google & Microsoft? There we go, read and compare:
Baby seems we never ever agree
You like the movies
And I like T.V.
I take things serious
And you take 'em light
I go to bed early
And I party all night
Our friends are sayin'
We ain't gonna last
Cuz I move slowly
And baby I'm fast
I like it quiet
And I love to shout
But when we get together
It just all work out
I take-2 steps forward
I take-2 steps back
We come together
Cuz opposites attract
And you know-it ain't fiction
Just a natural fact
We come together
Cuz opposites attract
Just search the site, will ya ? To begin with, you can limit it to the frontpage for the last 7 days. Even that would be an improvement.
Screw it. Just search the actual, current frontpage.
This move just seems to back up that claim.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
Here's my dupe.
What he said!
How many fulltime jobs can one man have?
Just take one of those Trauma Pills and it will all be beter tomorrow.
Anyone else notice that the submitters site is an anti-slashdot site?
Slashdot implement something like Digg so when the editors have a story in front of them it will tell them "Are you sure it's not a Dupe, these similar stories have been submitted recently..etc.etc"
Share your Knowlege - Kung-Fu Geekery
So now I'm wondering what this rumored google cube is going to be be like - if the os will be dynamically branded, and I'm also curiouser and curiouser about tv ad opportunities they're sure to persue. Y'know, they could save tivo's butt - what if there was a google ad that popped up when you were pausing or fast forwarding or whatever - tivo should have tons of the kind of data that google is basing their contextual ads on. I gues what bugs me about the radio thing is that it doesn't seem to lend itself to the contextual advertising they are good at, it would have to be more 'just ads' as opposed to contextual.
Or maybe they're after the ad sales force they get with this purchase more than a means to get in the medium itself.
Look at the link on the submitter:
http://www.playfullyclever.com/
And then you'll see articles like this one:
"The Problem With Slashdot
Everyone seems to be bitching about Slashdot these days. Whether it's dupes, digg farming, **Beatles-Beatles spam, or even yours truly, everyone has something to whine about. The problem is that none of these things are really the problem (oops, that's a thinker, don't hurt yourself slashbots)...."
So it seems this guy is working in the spirit of http://anti-slash.org/ -- but even sneakier -- the guy gets a dupe posted, where it links to his "how to fix Slashdot" webpage.
What a PLAYFULLY CLEVER bastard!
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
NT
Never mind...
Last time tried that with magazines, but I swear all the links I clicked on were broken.
One post letting everyone know this is a duplicate is enough.
What's the big deal with duplicates anyhow? If someone didn't see it yesterday, they'll see it now, and if someone _did_ see it yesterday; they don't have to RTFA, ya know?
Yesterday I was asking why people get so worked up over dupes and today I experienced a glimmer of rage on the sight of this story especially since it is still in the older suff section on the front page. Went away quickly though. What are you people doing to me?
From the press release: "In the future, Google plans to integrate dMarc technology into the Google AdWords platform, creating a new radio ad distribution channel for Google advertisers."
For the advertisers, it makes perfect sense: they can deliver the ads across the web, on print and radio. Expect TV support within 2007.
To be fair, yesterday's story linked to press reports on Google's purchase. Today's links are to Google's own press release on the story.
Nonetheless, a simple "following up on yesterday's story", would do a lot to increase confidence in the editors. However, doing that would require ScuttleMonkey to actually read the front page.
Sorry if that sounds a little snide but I am seriously trying to hold back the flames of fury here. I wish 'Taco would hurry up with the next Slashback.
May the Maths Be with you!
They've expanded into the same market twice now, looks like radio advertising is where its at right now for google to invest in two such companies in less than a day
In business, there are two conflicting necessities: stay with what you know, and diversify. You have to stay with what you know or the competition (in areas you don't understand) will eat you alive. You have to diversify, or grow stagnant and then die when your niche has a downturn.
Google is diversifying, while staying in the ad business. It's not like they bought a shoe company or something. The cliche they'll use is probably "synergy".
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
My d-u-p-l-i-c-a-t-e?
Is that like "My Y-a-h-o-o"?
"From the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen" - Cat Stevens
Couldn't someone at Slashdot just whip up a fast Dupe Detector that gives a warning if the articles share too many words or links? I don't think it'd be that hard. Maybe once SATs are done I could attempt, unless someone beats me to it!
I have googles ads on some sites. The biggest problem with them is that they are ugly and cannot be integrated into site layout and I guess some people don't even read them because of the ugly layout.
Another thing I would like to see is what the actual profit share percentage is but that's another story...
My quality social news site.com.
M3rk1n_Muffl3y writes "According to the BBC Google is buying US radio advertising firm dMarc Broadcasting for an upfront payment of $102m (£58m), rising to a possible $1.14bn by 2009. Interestingly it comes soon after Robert X. Cringely's prediction that Google will soon expand into targetted TV adverts. It looks we are finally beginning to see Google's transition to mainstream media."
Maybe we can get the Slash guys to incorporate a feature that would let the registered userbase label a submission a duplicate.
Once a certain number of users have done that, the two articles in question will be merged, one will be removed or something.
Something must be done, cuz I'm tired of all this complaining everytime it happens, but nothing gets done.
Doing something like this will keep Slashdot relevant, in an age where 2.0 rules the Net.
Let's do something! Yesterday!
I can't believe Google got suckered into buying the same company twice in two days.
And I don't know how dMarc thinks they're going to get away with that, what with all the press attention the two sales have received.
bkd
To the people who complain that this is a dupe: This is not a dupe. the last one was about google planning to buy, this one is about actually signing the agreement.
For instance, this article in the register makes this interesting point:Two points there:
1) Google's foray into traditional radio could simply be to facilitate its digital radio.
2) Google's growth cannot be sustained in a single market.
Neither of these were discussed too much in yesterday's comments.
My pics.
While this is certainly news, I'm surprised that the integration of Adsense comes as a shock to anyone. Since I highly doubt we'll see "Go to Google for more information. Type Aitch Tee Tee Pee colon slash slash double you double you double you dot gee oh oh gee el ee dot see oh em.", the only other 'content' to deliver by radio is ads supplied by customers for their product, which would require some kind of integration with their existing system (Adsense). My crystal ball doesn't tell me if this will be a successful experiment, but I highly doubt Google will use it to advertise Google.
;)
And "Pee colon slash" sounds pretty awful, anyways.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
I realize this strengthens Google's position in a market it has been in for a while, but given the other recent developments in Google's business, what is the strategy here? Is this some type of hyper-diversification?
Mr Monkey, or can I call you Scuttle, this may be of use in the future.
Jaj
It's a new Slashdot feature that allows you comment AND moderate on the same topic.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Damn out of mod points. ;(
Google is taking over. They are an innovative company that's the size of Microsoft with the brilliance of Apple. Just think about it, they're dipping their hands in to everything: email, maps, advertising, media, etc. There's no stopping them. Not that I'm complaining or anything, Google's services are a part of my everyday life and I don't see that changing anytime in the near future.
I highly recommend the book Crossing the Chasm for the tech lovers around. To apply its lessons to this articel ...
Satellite radio has ended its "early adopter" phase, and with the recent signing of Howard Stern (and no doubt future signings of other larger-than-life radio celebs) have probably made a successful leap over the Chasm of Uncertainty.
In short, it is here to stay at least for the time being, but the amount of future success it will attain is dependent on how many more adopters it can acquire. Since satellite radio has a "premium" product (ad-free narrowly-tailored radio), it charges a premium price, which turns it into something of a luxury item, and one many people will simply do without. But ...
If Satellite radio were to offer an ad-supported "free" version of their same great narrowly-tailored radio product, then the radio industry might see a sudden surge in satellite radio (a natural progression anyway, given the general decline of FM and nearly complete abandonment of AM radio...)
I imagine Google has more insight than I do, but I wouldn't be surprised if satellite radio companies begin offering ad-supported systems for cheap ( if not outright free), with dMarc (and thus Google) reaping the benefits of that system. In addition, it's a win-win for the Siriuses and XMs of the world, because their narrowly-tailored radio stations will require narrowly-tailored ads - something Adsense is itself well-tailored towards.
Just because you have the money doesn't mean you need to buy the entire advertising firm just to run a few advertisements!
Hi, it is very interesting to follow the google expansion. They make products for everything now: Google talk, google earth, google video, google search, google picasa and more and more. Where does it will stop??? Since many years they never stop to creates good products that kill the competitors right away! Have you ever try Google earth and compare this one with equivalent softwares? It is better that's it that's all! Same thing for Google searh!!! What to thnik about that? I have no idea but i think that google begins to be too bigger! They should concentrate their energies!!! Of course we should use Google Radio but where did it will lead us??? Just the future will give us the response! Thanks a lot, Thank you for visiting my web site and posting your comments on the forum!
Thanks for visiting my Web site! Post your comments on my forum!
I had hoped the radio landscape was already saturated by mega-billion dollar corporations, sadly Google is joining them. I never thought I would say Clear Channel and Google in the same sentence.
Honestly, I've just come to accept the dupes and such pretty much. And I don't think they're in danger of bringing down the site or some such nonesense.
But removing commentary from your detractors is a pretty big turnoff, especially when they've just shown a good lesson of how they are probably right.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
First off, the state of radio: ClearChannel is reducing (or has reduced) the number of ads they run, XM and Sirius are making fast gains. The future of radio advertising is looking bleak. A lot of radio ads are sold by salesmen, with high costs. Radio basically consists of pop music and a lot of fractured markets like country, rock and rap. Every day, more of those fractured markets change to pop hoping to get more listeners and consequently more advertisers. If your goal is to make a market out of the sale and purchase of advertising, the last thing you want to see is consolidation, shrinking supplies and fewer buyers.
Secondly, the state of internet; Google has shown an immense capability to compete in internet advertising systems. They've basically automated the sales process, and have a stellar program that can take text pages and generate a degree of relevance to a given ad. Their internet ad division brings in more and more money each quarter. Even their competitors are growing at 50 to 100 percent quarter to quarter.
All the analysts appear to think that Google is going to expand their current services into radio. Expanding there doesn't make sense. Nobody's listening to radio, and the size of that nobody gets smaller every day. The technology needed to create a context and compare it to a given advertiser is ridiculusly hard. Google almost certainly knows this (to call contextualizing digital streams Google's "core competancy" is a foolish oversimplification); what I don't know is if Google plans to try anyways. To give an example, I doubt lining up an ad about Mutual Funds following a song about flashing bling is likely to do well, despite some similarities. Google's text ads work better here because the Internet is a very big place. Most of the advertising that AdSense runs is put on informative articles rather than entertainment, which means they generally don't have to translate content into interest. It's possible that dMarc has a huge and valuable technology that can already come up with some of this demographics information, but I don't expect to see anything out of google that will improve or create new information of this sort. I don't think they do either: look at the conditional terms. Google might have to pay ten times as much for dMarc depending on things like ad inventory growth (pretty much out of their hands if the market continues to contract), integration and revenue growth targets are met. Of these three, I'd only expect the integration one to have a decent chance at paying off.
Instead, its pretty obvious this acquisition is more about what dMarc did BEFORE it was spun off into a radio advertising firm: it sold more internet ads than doubleclick. Many of the key people are still there. Maybe they'll start buying and selling digital radio ads, but I don't see that being a very good game (Yahoo!'s already tried it and they just missed earnings expectations) and there's some complexities revolving around the broadcast of ads over digital radio streams. What makes a lot more sense is video.google.com. Huge inventory of pre-existing content, and they've already got the functionality to take payments from advertisers and to pay video holders. The obvious tactic would be to put the ad in front of video clips, but this probably requires a change in the EULA to let google do that, which may or may not construe an affront of their goodwill. The less obvious strategy is to build an opt in system whereby the content authors get paid a bit for putting in their targeted ads. The benefit here is that part of the effort (determining when and how many ads to introduce) is removed from google and placed into the hands of the content producers.
If this is the case, it provides dMarc with a way into an expanding market and provides google with a good way for Google to expand their revenue growth outside of a narrowly defined market. The downside is that this is still yet another form of advertising, not the kind of diversity of earnings that I'd like to see from a company now worth more than Berkshire-Hathaway.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
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