A lot of discussions have surfaced lately about Google Adwords Radio Ads. The primary impetus for this has been the fact that Google has been offering a $400.00 coupon to help with the creative effort. I have been cautioning people to tread carefully. As someone with past experience dealing with traditional media outlets for advertising, it is a very different beast from online marketing.

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This morning something unusual happened. I listen to a lot of radio during the day. When I am working the radio is on most of the time. This morning I heard what I am positive was a Google radio ad. Is it possible I heard others before? Sure. However, I suspect a lot of Google radio ads are more traditional advertisers, so they would not be so easily identified. This was someone who clearly was an internet marketer moving their craft to the radio with the help of Google radio ads. The advertisement was an offer for one of those XBox 360 deals where you can get a “Free” XBox 360. The catch is you have to complete a bunch of other offers and jump through some hoops to get this “Free” XBox 360. These kinds of offers are common place on the internet, although slowly and surely people have taken more issue with them and their claims. The search engines are more skeptical of running ads for them because they do not actually offer anything for for free.

Here is where reality and the protective cacoon of the internet collide. The established media outlets like television and radio are monitored much more carefully by the Federal Trade Commission. On top of that you have people listening who are much more likely to report people and not just accept a misleading ad. On the internet there is still a high level of tolerance of acceptance that other forms of media do not enjoy. I forsee if these ads become more prevelent that the FTC will take action and that the impact will eventually filter back to internet advertising. I think if these entities never advertised on traditional media, it may have taken much longer for all of this to happen. This will essentially expedite a crackdown on misleading or misguided internet advertising. How long will it take? It is anybody’s guess. It partly depends on how prevalent the traditional internet advertisers are in taking part in Google radio ads.

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I suspect the particular radito station I heard the ad on would not have even run the ad if someone went to them directly and asked to buy the time. I am sure this was filled at a corporate level, where the oversight on actual content in ads does not seem to be very stringent. I suspect they are thinking Google is doing some kind of checking/verification of these ads before they deliver them. This particular radio station is part of one of the largest radio groups in the United States.

One final note, and one other thing that I warned people about, that targeting is very important in all advertising but especially important in radio advertising and television advertising. This particular ad was completely misplaced in the time slot and station it was on. It was not a market full of people who would run to their computer to get a free X Box 360. So beyond hastening in more regulation on internet related advertising, it is likely they will not even cover their costs to have run the ad.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 10:03 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.