Radio Google

Google is great at getting Web users access to information, and great at getting advertisers access to its Web users. So, what is it doing getting into the radio business?

Tuesday's purchase of radio advertising company dMarc Broadcasting for $102 million (and up to $1.1 billion more over the next three years) is just another step toward making the company a one-stop shop for advertisers.

It's not clear how much the dMarc deal will do for Google, which may be why the company isn't betting that much, comparatively speaking, on the acquisition. The reason: DMarc only gives Google access to a small slice of a contracting market.

Up until now, dMarc's chief product has been a tool that lets radio outlets automate their operations, a tool used by some 5,000 of the 13,000 stations in the U.S. Of those customers, about 500 use another dMarc product, one that allows them to automatically sell leftover air time--"remnant" time, in industry-speak--to advertisers at a steep discount. "If you're buying that unsold inventory, you're expecting to get a pretty good price," says radio sales consultant Eric Ronning.