Google Radio Redux

The Wall Street Journal's Jessica E. Vascellaro does an excellent job of recapping the rise and fall of Google's moribund radio advertising initiative.

In a nutshell,

Google Inc.'s foray into selling radio ads was supposed to show how its online-advertising brainpower could revolutionize an old-fashioned people business.

The company teamed up with Chad and Ryan Steelberg, brothers who were sharp dressers and wore deep Southern California tans. They had a technology for transmitting, scheduling and tracking radio ads. "Google is going to conquer radio," boasted the exuberant Chad in 2006.

Instead, radio tripped up Google. The company is pulling the plug on its attempt to automate radio-ad sales on May 31, exposing how far Google is from its goal of grabbing a big chunk of the multibillion-dollar business of off-line ad sales.

A look at what went wrong shows that Google misjudged the capacity of its technology to work beyond the Web, and underestimated the human side of the business [emphasis mine]. Radio stations refused to turn over airtime to a computer algorithm that set prices far lower than their own rates. Big advertisers steered clear.

Good story. Good reminder that some things, like human relationships and interactions, are not reducible to automation.

Read the FULL STORY HERE (for as long as WSJ keeps it available to the public):