They'd better understand about target audiences on a local and specifically targeted demographic level if they intend to seriously pursue this. For example, they'd need to understand about Los Angeles "free form rock and roll" and our local "hippie radio" crowd to know what will reach the particular target audience and what adverts to run.

Same thing with the rap and hip-hop audience; will they really know the target and have the appropriate ad inventory?

At least they can fire all these sales people when this thing fails. It's not like they just blew $2 billion on an asset that produces no income.

Since last June, Herndon, Virginia-based Mobiltrak has logged the listening habits of 1 million commuters a month by monitoring electric radiation. Chances are, if you've driven through the Washington, DC, area recently, you've unknowingly participated in Mobiltrak's survey.

Mobiltrak promises data that's a lot more specific than the weighted samples used for decades by Arbitron to estimate audience size and demographics. As cars pass its towers at busy intersections, sensors "sniff" electrical radiation emitted by each car stereo.

[fastcompany.com...]

My guess is Google could add this type of technology to their wireless network as they roll it out. Would allow them to correlate what they already know about online ads and demographics to radio ads.

Good points, @Marcia. I think G is hoping that the cost savings due to large scale automation will offset any problems in targeting to specific demographics. Time will tell, as always.

I assume these audio ads could just as easily be run on online radio stations, or even podcasts if they were downloaded through some kind of Google service that inserted the ads.

Google audio ads might become just like Google text ads.