Google-powered radio waves start in Detroit

Google's attempt to start exploring non-web based advertising revenue streams has begun in vehicle country, Detroit. Google's purchase of dMarc broadcasting this past January is allowing the web search giant to fuse its immensely-profitable AdSense platform for the web onto the traditional ratio atmosphere. With Google being so good at matching relevancy for advertisers on the web, doing even close to the same thing with automated radio relevant advertising may signal a new age for the Google folks, as millions of people daily listen to terrestrial-based radio.

Will Google's relevancy approach revolutionize the way radio airtime is sold for advertising purposes? This is a huge unknown right now, but if any one entity could pull it off, it would be Google. More advertisers could come back to traditional radio to find newly-relevant customers coming their way, and ad dollars that have shifted off traditional networks like television and newspaper and onto the web could pause for a moment while radio makes a sort-of advertising comeback.

Since the dMarc system automates the buying, placing and tracking of radio ads, the challenge for Google will try to make radio ads bought from Google to be as uniquely relevant as its web-based ads are when a user performs a web search. There is one stark difference, though: the web is two-way interactive -- radio is one-way only. For now.