It is no great surprise, after Google’s acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting back in January, to see that Google has anounced that they are running tests of the new ‘Google audio ads’ in the US.
In a clear move into offline advertising channels (albeit still managed via the online Google adwords interface), Google is opening up the doors for its advertisers to launch radio campaigns.
The degree of profiling appears to be very attractive – advertisers will be able to target customers based on location, radio station type, day of the week and time of the day. As it will be fully integrated into the Adwords campaign management interface, we can expect detailed reports of when and where the radio ads were broadcast.
Unfortunately, Google audio ads are only available in a U.S. beta test at present, but it is an interesting move and we will be watching with interest.
