Just as it did with its print ad sales programs a few weeks ago, Google is pulling the plug on its radio advertising sales business. Like the print service, the radio sales business never took off. The difference: Google bought a radio ad-sales company, DMarc, in 2006 to place its radio ads and spent undisclosed millions of dollars on the initiative.

            Google was selling “remainder” ad inventory in both print and radio, and it faced difficult challenges. No publishers or radio station owners wanted to allow Google to place ads from their existing advertisers — the “cannibalization” issue. Ad response had to be tracked, which was difficult, and rates had to be very low. All of that added up to a simple “no thanks” for most ads.

            In the radio business, there was an additional hurdle: Stations had to sign up for the DMarc system, which cost about $75,000. Even at a cluster of multiple stations, that was a stretch for a system that wasn’t producing much revenue. And advertisers could not choose specific stations, which made it impossible for them to target the demographic they wanted to reach. Nowadays, advertising on radio is all about specific demographics.

            Google Print ends at the end of this month; Google Audio will close down at the end of May. Instead, the company said on its corporate blog, it would concentrate on putting audio ads into streaming audio over the Internet.

            Google has been notable for launching lots of initiatives, and sometimes maintaining them for years before they either made it or failed. Mark both Google Print and Google Audio in the failure column, but give the company credit for trying. Google, which employs more than 22,000, is expected to lay off about 40 people involved in the radio venture.

            The decision was announced yesterday. For more details, see this MediaPost article.