Offline advertising

Almost exactly a year ago (May 18th, 2008) I wrote a blog post declaring Google wanted to be the king of advertising.

That dream received a blow in January when Google announced they were discontinuing their print advertising program. A short time later, in February, Google relegated their radio advertising program to the same fate.

I think these stories say more about the state of print and radio than they do about Google’s failure to expand past online search and display advertising. Rather than investing time and capital in to sinking ships Google decided to cut their losses.

Wonder how bad things could get? Brian McDaniel wrote an interesting blog post comparing the newspaper industries print advertising revenues verse their online advertising revenues. Take a look at his revenue convergence prediction charts. Ouch.

How about radio? Pandora (and probably Last.fm), not satellite radio, will deliver the final death blow.

People don’t like to accept a future where their values may be diminished. The answers were obvious but newspaper execs preferred to bury their heads in the sand. The same could be said of radio.

Newspapers and radio no longer enjoy a monopoly on attention. As their overinflated advertising revenues vanish, those same dollars may very well not resurface online. As an advertiser, I am very happy I can purchase a slice of the same pie for a lot less.