$5 Radio Spots??

Sure the stats are frightening:

According to the RAB, locally generated broadcast ad revenues were down 13 percent across the nation in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared to the final three months of 2007.

But advertising revenues are down everywhere...including at venerable Google. So these stats are probably more a reflection on the economy than radio.

What's the true story on radio advertising?

This weekend we just happened to be at a national barber chain with several locations in the Boston area and overheard a very interesting conversation between the owner and a few of the employees.

Apparently the owner had received a quote from a radio station in Boston (which we will not name) for a radio spot for $5. Clearly, she was very excited about this possibility as the she indicated that she had never been able to buy a radio spot for so little.

Some of her employees were incredulous as well. Seemed to good to be true.

One of the younger employees grabbed the price sheet and said, "Oh, this quote was for the music playing on "XXX.X.com"

The owner said "Oh, what is that?"

After a few minutes of heated discussion which led nowhere, we could not restrain ourselves and had to jump in to explain.

Finally comprehending what the quote was for, the owner stated "I never even heard of that so forget it."

Before letting the conversation die, we asked a logical follow-on question:

Had the barbershop ever bought online advertising?

The response: "Sure, on CitySearch once, but I really did not understand it and don't know if it even worked."

This raised some alarms bells for us.

1) It's clear that traditional local advertisers are still very skeptical about new media.

2) Radio station sales teams are completely failing to explain the value of their online offerings.

Some might say that for $5, it may not be worth the effort for most sales people.

But if this is radio's future (which RadioSherpa believes it is), in-stream advertising had better start being the focus during the training process of ALL local radio sales teams.

$5 is still better than zero!