Google Audio is NOT AdWords

Here’s a very perceptive analysis of Google Audio.

It differentiates the fundamental accountability of Google’s AdWords from the fundamental absence of accountability for Google Audio. The author notes:

Google has floundered in all its offline diversification efforts to date: Radio, print, TV…because its new media online value proposition is NOT transferrable to offline old media. Advertising is shifting online from off, for just that reason.

Google’s strategy to make the medium more accountable is really nothing you can’t do without Google right now (in fact, the strategies described are heard on satellite radio all the time – and not enough on terrestrial radio).

This doesn’t mean Google won’t be successful over the long term, of course. It just means this is not the same market as AdWords. It’s not a market in which Google has the same fundemantal value potential.

It is, however, a market in which Google wants a piece of your action.

The author concludes:

Google may garner a small amount of existing AdWords customers that want to try out radio, but Google is NOT on track to become the master of radio advertising.