I can’t stand it anymore. I’m entering into the marketing/advertising game myself, but radio ads absolutely suck the life out of me. They have got to be the worst form of advertising I have ever heard! They’re corny, annoying, and worse off they interrupt the flow of music. So, I want to change the way radio ads are run – I’m done listening to another sales pitch while I’m on my way to work.
Enter the new radio: social radio (what a clever name…). Anyway social radio will either remove 100% of all vocal ads or at least reduce their frequency to something reasonable, maybe 2 mins of ads every 60mins? Using social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook or maybe this would lead to the creation of an entirely new social network regardless the idea is for users to post what songs they want to hear and the DJ or radio station will play your song.
This won’t happen instantly of course, because you won’t be the only person requesting songs. However, it will give more control to users – if radio stations comply. For example, a local radio station sets up a Twitter account, accumulates followers (advertising on their station) and because these followers are encouraged to post songs they want to listen to I imagine this would attract the masses. Anyway followers post the songs they want to hear – one per tweet (possibly reduce twitter characters to fewer than 140 for these accounts?). After a song has been tweeted it can now be voted on using something similar to Facebook’s ‘Like’ button. I realize RT (Re-Tweets) are the currency for Twitter, but adding a polling feature might help make voting easier to track. With that said, RT should be used to measure a songs popularity too.
What about those ads?
Now that the radio station has it’s own Twitter handle small banner ads will be displayed in between tweets. You could throw an ad in between every other tweet, every 5, 10 etc. I realize that radio ads are simple for small businesses to create, little technology is required, this also might be the reason some small businesses are hesitant to advertise online. Yes, to some technology is intimidating, but I know these banner ads can be constructed with ease given today’s knowledge and innovation. Hell, maybe a banner ad has a white background with black letters that’s fine with me. I believe when introducing this to some local business owners is to emphasize the simplicity with which these ads can be built. Once I know they understand and feel comfortable with the new medium I would dive right into ad targeting. OK Twitter doesn’t have an ad sidebar like Facebook does and it doesn’t need one. Only allow the ads to be displayed on the radio stations Twitter account (exclusive ads…lol). As for the ad platform – I would hope to see it be similar to Facebook’s hyper targeting.
Wait, who’s going to profit off of this?
Twitter & the radio station, that’s right, Twitter could charge a hosting fee (monthly, semi annual, annual etc.) and then the radio station receives all the ad revenue it procures; OR, Twitter gets %X and the radio station %Y and presto we have a simple revenue stream that (hopefully) leaves both parties smiling. Of course, it won’t be that easy, but I don’t see why should this be complicated??
@Aftranch 