Radio Ads By Google's dMarc

While Google started using dMarc to test radio ad sales last year, the initiative faced some obstacles. First, dMarc is affiliated with only around 700 stations--too few to provide radio ad inventory on the scale needed to achieve high revenue targets. Second, before the Google purchase dMarc mostly trafficked in remaindered ad inventory--unsold air time that is low-value by definition. Google has struggled to ramp up both the quantity and quality of inventory available through dMarc, with limited success. Although Google is rumored to be in talks with CBS Radio to acquire over $1 billion in premium ad inventory, so far nothing has come of the reported discussions.

Despite the rocky year with dMarc, Google remains intent on penetrating the offline or "traditional media" ad business. Over the last two years, it has experimented with selling newspaper and magazine ads--but these have been limited beta forays, and Google is circumspect about their results. Google's Vice President of Ad Sales, Tim Armstrong, has also indicated the company is interested in TV ad sales. Significantly, dMarc's digital ad placement system can also be used in TV.