Recently Google stepped into audio / radio advertisements. We wanted to give it a try for our classified ads site webcosmo.com. With the radio stations available all around the US states this was a great opportunity for introducing a website to a bigger, great audience. Plus there was a $400 give away by Google for people who was giving it a try.

You need a professional quality audio ad for running audio/radio ads. Don't worry Google already made it easy for you with the Ad Creation Marketplace. Google Ad Creation Marketplace put together many professional voice artists, you can hear the example ads and make a decision.

Making a Google Audio / Radio ad is easy like one two three. First on Google AdWords account create a new Audio Ad campaign. Specify there your desired audience, budget, when to play ad, ad play date range etc. You can target the audience by age range, gender as well as locations down to city level. Another good feature is you can target stations like news, easy listening etc.

Google audio ad is bidding based. You specify how much maximum you want to pay per thousand(CPM) listeners, and Google will find best ad slots for you for that bid.

Audio Ad creation wizard will ask you then if you already have an audio ad ready to use, or you wanna create one. If you want to create one use the Ad Creation Market place. Here is the link to the ad we made for webcosmo.com by Michael Corley http://www.webcosmo.com/web.mp3Audio Ad Marketplace is a bidding place also. You specify your need, price, pick the artists you like, and they will reply back with a price. This can be pay per play or ownership option. With pay per play you pay each time ad is played. With ownership option its all yours. Personally I like the ownership option.

Upon completion of the audio ad campaign you have to wait until Google approves it.

Results:

We ran the campaign for one month, mostly in Boston, California, Newyork area. It wasn't a revolutionary change. Traffic did not increase much. There was only 2-10 extra direct visitors per day we had. Compared to the cost thats really not much return. 

We ran a second campaign with the 400 dollars we got as promotion from Google. Conversions still same.

For any advertising campaign we make its always a major concern how much we are getting in return for the money we are spending. Both advertisements reach more then 300,000 people, which is a good number. But the return is not significant compared to the audience.