Broadcast Advertising Evolves

As interactive advertising gains market share, broadcast advertising is responding by becoming 'rationalized' and possibly commoditized. The process of buying broadcast advertising is becoming more efficient, with more resources available to measure its effectiveness. One of the big drivers of this evolution is Google, but they are not alone. They just bought a company that brings radio advertising within reach of small businesses, called dMarc Broacasting (see excerpt below). Another company, Spotrunner, allows companies to select a tv commerical template, customize it and order local market tv time effectively. Templates allow inexperienced marketers to leverage more sophisticated ad formats.

To measure broadcast (and with Google, even print) advertising, these companies are all pushing advertisers to use 800 phone numbers and specific internet landing pages in their ads which allow the media company to compare the ads' performance. Another great side benefit of this system is that small companies receive an external database of inquiries, helping them track their prospects. Since small companies are often very sloppy in keeping track of leads, we expect sales productivity to improve as well.

WSJ.com: Google Steps Further Into World of Old Media by Kevin J. Delaney (subscription required) 

The radio deal is the latest of a series of recent moves by Google   in which it aims to bring its Internet advertising expertise to bear on   old-media markets. Since last year, Google says it has been placing ads on   behalf of advertisers in three magazines and the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper.   And Chief Executive Eric Schmidt late last year acknowledged in an interview   that the company is considering extending its ad system to TV advertising as   well.