It’s happening throughout society – cutting out the middleman (or disintermediation if you’re a consultant Matt). Every day, doctors see patients who have already diagnosed their condition on the web but there’s still a waiting list at the surgery. Now advertisers can pitch up with their their media plan worked out and their creative made if they choose to but that doesn’t mean we lose specialist advertising expertise.

Just as at the doctor’s surgery, people call on the experts when the risks are highest. Any business that’s spending a significant percentage of turnover on advertising cannot afford to make mistakes with their campaigns and will still approach professional buyers and creatives.

Another possible effect of Google’s plan is that it could get more people understanding how to use radio advertising as an effective communications tool and that, in time, could lead to better ads, especially from small advertisers.

Or I might be wrong.

[...] 17th, 2007 · No Comments Thanks to James for the link to this selection of screenshots from the Beta test of Google’s audio ads [...]

[...] James Cridland. [...]

I’ve never been afraid to be creative :)

I rather rushed this post. Thinking further, this is a great opportunity for smaller creative units, who’ll get a ton of free advertising from Google – who need people to make great ads for them. I’ll post a more considered post in a little while.