Watch this, it’s good.

What’s this got to do with radio, you ask? You’ve not watched it all the way through.

Perfect. Give the people behind this an award.

It’s been a manic week. Five days in Singapore, and then two nights in Paris. And I’ve still a flight to head office in Glasgow, then a weekend in Dublin to come. I’ve made quite a few blog posts, but if I’ve learnt anything from Martin Belam, it’s to stagger their release. So I’ll be doing that. In my cheesy radio voice: “Stay tuned for a post about Marty, and a post about my new ChiPod! Don’t touch that, er, browser!”

Until the channel tunnel cut off my mobile phone signal, I’ve spent the last half-hour catching up on my RSS feeds, courtesy of Google Reader (for mobile). The last post I read was Matt Cutts posting about Google, using human input to tweak search results). Which set me thinking.

While in Singapore, I was doing a lot of work on the joint presentation Nick and I made; and did a lot of Google searches to back up the information we were using. One such search was launch of dab radio which I punched into the Firefox search without a second thought. It returned information of the launch of DAB digital radio, as you’d expect.

But it returned MediaCorp’s launch of DAB in Singapore. Not the UK launch many years before.

And it struck me that this was perhaps one reason why Google was doing so well. I’ve been oblivious to it for a while, but a search on google.com within the UK gives you UK-biased results. And a search on google.com within Singapore gives you Singaporean-biased results.

I’ve been talking for a long while here about relevant advertising being the way forward. Google’s delivering that - but also delivering relevant content too, depending where you are and what you’re doing.

It reminds me that I ought to be doing geo-location stuff on mediauk.com to add correct dialling codes. Better get onto that. When I’m not so tired. And boy, am I tired.

An interesting post from Steve Safran’s Lost Remote, where he recommends buying Google keywords for, say, your station’s weather forecasts.

As an example, a quick search for Sheffield weather doesn’t return anything from Hallam FM, the local radio station for the area; and the BBC’s the top result. Well - nearly the top result. The top result is actually… the weather forecast. Rather negating the point.

However, I would also recommend you buy Google keywords, for one reason: Google’s never fresh enough.

One example - do a search for Derby result, to discover who won today. The best match is the top result, but that’s a page that (at the time of writing) Google had last looked at on May 22nd. (Epsom racecourse cleverly published a page ahead of time; clicking on that result reveals the winner).

Later this month, Muse are playing in the new Wembley stadium. People will search for Muse Wembley pictures after the event - and, I’ll bet, not find much. You see, Google’s main search results are produced, for many sites, monthly or fortnightly.

This is where Google keywords come in. If you were to buy ‘Muse Wembley pictures’ for just a day or so, you’ll catch that traffic: doing Google’s job before its crawlers come along and take a snapshot of that page. And a secret: certainly in the tests I’ve done, Google’s search engine appears to be influenced to look at your AdWords target page fairly quickly after you start advertising; so you can stop the ads fairly quickly, once you appear in the organic search results.

So - if something important happens, whack it into Google Adwords, and watch the traffic come in (even after you’ve stopped paying for it). That’s my tip of the day.

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Disclosure: a site I run earns revenue from Google AdWords.

Visit Oslo, and you’ll be impressed with the way the city merges its Nordic tradition, and a laid-back, hurry-free attitude, with some pretty impressive technology. Jump off the plane, and you’re whisked into town, underground for part of the way, on bright new trains which give you latest news, on a flat screen, from NRK and the BBC.

The radio station P4 is no exception. I was there on Thursday to talk to their sales team and some of their clients.

P4’s Oslo offices (which I should have photographed, but didn’t) are inspiring. A standard office block contains a really impressive open space - studios in all four corners (glass walls facing inwards), all visible by the news team, the producers, and internet production team.

P4 is fascinatingly similar to the station I currently work for, Virgin Radio. P4’s national, like Virgin; is 15 years old this year (six months older than Virgin). It employs around 85 staff (again, similar to Virgin). Its website justifiably crows about its success in terms of market share - it enjoys 24%. That’s not similar - but Virgin has more audience than P4 if we’re splitting hairs.

Their DAB-only radio station, P4 Bandit, has live programming - they feel very strongly that stations like this shouldn’t just be jukebox services. They’re experimenting with new technology, too - both their stations are running DAB slideshow, for instance - and have an impressive website. They’re a young-feeling station - and, just like Virgin, have seen around five marriages between staff!

Where they differ is their incredible audience statistics gathering. They use people-meters to monitor their audience, rather than the UK’s antiquated diary-based system. This allows them to measure radio by the minute, rather than the UK’s antiquated 15-minute interval. This means they know what happens to their audience with every feature they do. (They say they don’t lose audiences during the commercial breaks). Oh, and audience statistics for each show appear to be available pretty quickly after the broadcast, instead of the two months it takes RAJAR to get the paper diaries back, and then to work out a three, or six, month average.

So, with these new statistics, how are P4 selling radio?

They’re not. They’re selling broadcast advertising.

In Norway, you buy radio just like television. You’re no longer buying on figures that might be the average of a six month survey - you’re buying exactly how many people heard that ad in that exact timeslot. So, if the station broadcasts a feature which is a turn-off, it loses financially. Alternatively, big events - think V Festival, or Party in the Park, or football commentary - don’t get lost in the six-month RAJAR, but add money, instantly, to the bottom-line.

And, of course, the benefit of this method of selling advertising is that radio - a medium always criticised for being too difficult to buy - suddenly becomes as easy as buying television. Which means that anyone can do it, without additional training for radio.

And guess what? Radio ad sales in Norway are increasing. Compare that to the UK, where GCap Media, the country’s largest commercial radio company, are having a torrid time: Ralph Bernard announced to the City on Wednesday that “like-for-like [ad] revenues for April and May 2007 will be down just 2% and 1% respectively year-on-year”. Apparently, this is good news.

The UK’s radio listening survey is one of the most impressive pieces of research in the world; even more impressive when you consider the vast amount of dog-eared, pizza-stained diaries which are (to some degree) works of fiction but yet give vaguely consistent, mostly-believable figures. Programme directors criticise the electronic replacements for dramatically cutting hours, and for decimating breakfast show figures. (How can any meter measure my listening habits, which is generally 30 minutes of BBC Five Live before I get out of bed and pull my clothes on, therefore activating the meter?)

However, Norway is showing that, for all the concerns about portable people meters, they have the capability of dramatically changing the commercial future of radio. We should take note.

Tussen tak to my friends there; and I look forward to seeing you in the UK soon.

Some time ago (too far ago for me to find it quickly), I posted on the need for radio stations to sell advertising on their website by ‘per thousand views’, not clickthroughs. I reasoned that there was a brand benefit to appearing on websites, just as there is on radio. The click through is relevant, but just not that relevant.

Anyway, the splendidly named Ars Technica has just published a story saying… guess what?

Banner ads may provide a valuable function in fostering familiarity even if those that view them never click through to the source of the ads.

Incredible. You read it here, folks.

And now, to celebrate, I’m going to be subtly changing this website around slightly, to adequately reflect the fact that I’m not looking for a job, and therefore don’t need to be quite so, um, assertive about my credentials any more. And maybe even sort out the fact that my regular-used BLOCKQUOTE tag appears to show horridly tiny little text. Done. Told you it would be subtle.

Pulling Power of Radio - lots of clever ad agencies.

Mandy Fowler from Zenith talked about the need of making radio simple. She talked about their new integrated approach to sales, called NewCast. She sais how much she liked Orange’s sponsorship of Christian O’Connell.

Other panellists talked about more investment in radio content. Nathalie Schwartz promised it if 4digital wins it.

Worldspace has just finished: will write it up soon.

Definitely worth taking a look at this fascinating post.

If you run a radio sales house, be afraid. Be very afraid.

If you are a creative producer, or a creative ad agency, be afraid. Be very afraid.

If you run a radio station, be interested. Very, very interested.

Update: Nick Piggott has thoughts.

Update 2: So do I. Here’s a rather longer and more considered piece.