Google Radio Automation and the broadcast plights behind platformization

Bibliographic Data

ID6443563
AuthorsAndy Kelleher Stuhl (0000-0001-8951-8698, McGill University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume27
Issue4
Pages2033-2049
Publication date2023-10-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Media & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14614448231203616
OpenAlexW4387458723
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited18

In 2006, Google entered the broadcast radio industry in an attempt to prove it could diversify its ad sales technology beyond the web. With a product called Google Radio Automation, the company simultaneously installed its ad tech and ingratiated itself with radio producers. Histories of automation and programmatic advertising in American radio help to contextualize Google’s project and trace the roots of its failure. Publicity materials, industry reporting, and interviews with engineers and managers illuminate Google’s efforts toward cultural and industrial integration with radio. Problems related more to consolidation than to technological change thwarted those efforts and saw Google abruptly shift its attention to streaming audio in 2009. Revisiting a time when platform companies sought to infiltrate rather than replace older media, this article proposes that the turn toward a new media paradigm had more to do with old media plights than with the insight of technology firms

Advertising · Automation · Business · Consolidation (business · Product (mathematics · Publicity · Radio broadcasting · Telecommunications · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Engineering · Media Studies and Communication · Radio, Podcasts, and Digital Media · Marketing

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