TargetSpot has announced that founder Doug Perlson has stepped down to launch a new venture. His replacement is Eyal Goldwerger, an online advertising and e-commerce veteran.
TargetSpot, which is backed by Bain Capital, CBS Interactive and Union Square Ventures, aggregates the online stream of radio stations and other online music services to build up its [...]
Search Results for: dmarc
Leadership Change at TargetSpot
August 4, 2009 – 6:42 pm
Google Struggles in Radio; Bid4Spots Gains Favor
April 10, 2008 – 5:03 pm
Google’s ambitious effort to take its bidding system across media might be hitting a bump in radio. The company’s program started out fairly well when Google bought dMarc (since renamed Google Audio Ads) for $102 million plus incentives in 2006. Since then, it must be doing something right. It claims affiliations with 1,600 FM and [...]
Google’s ‘Not Easy’ Expansion into Radio, Cable Sales
March 30, 2007 – 5:21 pm
Google is pushing hard to jumpstart its radio ad business, leveraging its $1.245 billion acquisition of the DMarc rep business in 2005. The search leader says it is working with 900 stations in 200 markets.
But so far, according to an article by Miguel Helft in The New York Times, its list of participating stations in major market is spotty, and the inventory it gets is almost always remnant, rather than drive-time.
Google’s Bay Area radio affiliates, for instance, are low-rated stations in outlying areas rather than metros. Its top-rated Bay Area station ranks #18. In New York, its top station is #27. One problem: Google has ramped up the paranoia by hiring away top sales reps from stations. It also had been rumored to be in talks to acquire Clear Channel, the nation’s largest chain of stations, but apparently nothing panned out with that.
Google Ramps Up Radio Ad Strategy
November 4, 2006 – 1:19 am
Google is said to be considering a major deal to either partner with Clear Channel’s radio stations, or to buy the stations outright, according to RBC Capital Markets (as reported by Jeffrey Yorke in Radio & Records, a radio trade pub). Clear Channel’s stock has been depressed and it has been putting out feelers to potential buyers for some or all of its assets.
A Clear Channel deal with the Google Audio division, also known as dMarc, might prove attractive for both companies since Google would be in a position to fill the stations’ local inventory. During the past 60 days, it has hired about 100 local radio station sales people in New York, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and possibly other markets, says RBC.
Clear Channel “has been the most consistently willing to implement both dramatically novel (and disruptive) sales strategies such as ‘Less Is More,’ and dramatic innovations on the technology side,” said RBC, per Yorke. “Given it’s current exploration of strategic alternatives we could see this playing out potentially through Google making a modest investment in Clear Channel (either in a Leveraged Buy Out, or simply in Clear Channel’s current incarnation) to help secure access to inventory.”
