Google radio ads can face an uphill task as the company today disclosed that dMarc founders, Chad and Ryan Steelberg, have left Google. Google had bought dMarc, the automated solution for managing radio advertising, last year for $102 million in cash , with an estimated maximum pay out of $1.136 billion. From the reports emerging right now, dMarc founders and other members of their management team are unlikely to get more than $200 million. Source of contention seems to be low number of radio stations that dMarc has been able to signup to publish ads. However, dMarc claims that Google’s attraction for higher amount of automation and reduction in sales staff has led to dMarc not being able to meet its publisher acquisition targets.
It was only near the end of last year that Google had started rolling out radio ads through select publishers and has also been in talks with CBS to get ads on radio. Off course Google claims that it will still continue with the Radio Ads program but it has to seen what will be impact of these changes on the Google’s Radio Ads time-to-market plan.
