It is not enough that Yahoo! (YHOO) is selling advertising for newspapers and Google (GOOG) is brokering every media type under the sun. Now, Ebay (EBAY) is opening a radio advertising auction business.
The new network will have 2,300 stations and will work through Ebay’s Media Marketplace Web site.
Although it is fine for an auction company like Ebay to auction radio time and a advertising targeting business like the one Google has to auction TV time, it has to make Wall St wonder why the companies do not stick to their own businesses.
Radio and newspapers have been around much longer than the internet. Whatever troubles they have gotten themselves into will not be solved by electronic media purchasing systems. If anything, a more efficient systems will drive rates down. Not exactly what a business with revenue attrition needs.
Douglas A. McIntyre