Can Google Audio Ads be as easy and effesctive as Google AdWords? That was the question Donna Bogatin (Digital Markets) put to André Bergeron, owner/operator of Babble-On Recording Studios. She wanted “a radio production talent insider take” on how the Google Ad Creation Marketplace will impact the radio advertising industry. Bergeron seems to know what he’s talking about.
“Dollar-A-Holler Radio ads have been around forever. The local Hi-Fi Store owner could always go into the local station and bark off a series of sale prices in shrill tones that would annoy anyone within earshot. This would be no different, really. There is so much more to effective messaging, to branding, to understanding how people listen to the radio than simply writing down “for all your underwear needs” and handing it off to Johnny promo voice to record.
Part of why people can’t stand listening to the radio is the quality of the ads, they’re, by most estimations, shouted, boring, and insultingly simplistic, and, if there are a lot of them, it just magnifies the mind-numbing nature of them.”
I think that sentence really sums it up. That reality will ultimately prove to be The Big Problem for radio going forward. Shitty commercials in an era when we no longer have to listen to them in order to hear the news and music we want.
Andre Bergeron emails an additional thought:
“Throughout a programming day, the station dresses itself with a carefully crafted image using music, personalities, promotions, etc – to create “a brand”, if you will. Then a stopset comes on and it’s like the advertisers are allowed to dress the station in clown’s clothes, leisure suites or horizontal stripes.”
I just wanted to pass along a quick “thanks” for using my quote in your blog regarding the issues with radio advertising on the cheap these days. Radio is such a wonderful medium – it really has the capacity to touch our lives in ways that TV and other media can only approximate. If terrestrial radio is to survive and thrive, it needs (once again) to become a unique place to find people, ideas and entertainment that are distinct and meaningful to the community which it is supposed to serve.
Better sounding ads are a part of that mix and can be made a necessity by those in charge at the stations – I know this from personal experience. As a production director for many years, it was my job to ensure that our stopsets didn’t cause people to turn the dial – I pulled stuff that was bad and had it re-done, or brought to the account executive at the station with whom I would then have creative discussions on how we could “make this thing better”. It was a formula that worked well – the station had the highest TSL (time spent listening) in the market during many of those years – this was primarily due to programming connected with the audience, local personalities, a timely format, etc – but, as my boss at the time would always say, our approach to the stopsets was one of the factors that separated us from “all the other noise”. I still believe that.
Ads aren’t intrinsically evil, interruptive, stupid or uninformative. In fact, they can truly be imaginative, engaging and helpful. The people who make them, the people who buy them, and the people who air them just have to care. Is that a guaranteed formula? – no – there will always be subjective issues relating to humor, execution of style, etc. But, a more thoughtful and realistic approach would be welcomed by many.