Before you advertise on TV, on the radio or in a newspaper, you must read this article. Search Engine Land is a great site about all things “search.” Recently, it featured an article discussing how options are expanding for those who advertise through Google.

Pay per click or PPC advertising is immediately recognizable as an ad medium that is easy to track. The exact where and when of each click and subsequent sale can be recorded, making it easy to monitor its efficiency. This is rather expensive, though costs have mostly been kept down due to widespread use of an auction system. Is it possible to create television, audio and print ads that have the same kind of easy traceability for the same price they have always had? An online company is carving out new paths in long-familiar media that have been advertising assets for years.

Ironically, web-based company Google are the ones leading the way in traceable television, audio and print ads. This is probably due largely in part to the fact that Google has not discounted the impact of television, radio and print. Even though web-based advertising has exploded over the past ten years, it is important to keep in mind that people still entertain and inform themselves via TV, audio and print. Google has found a way to track ads which works just like PPC ad-tracking, but is primitive in its methodology. Within each ad, Google will list a specific web address or phone number through which customers will order goods and services. Calls pass through Google’s unique number and on to the business’ main phone line. With today’s abilities to trace calls and discern which call went through which number, Google is able to tell you when and from where calls are coming. This same idea is used when advertising a specific webpage.

Online marketing campaigns are necessary in this day and age. Most everyone accesses the internet at least a little bit. Some companies have spent most of their advertising budget in recent years targeting the online audience while seemingly forgetting about the huge number of people who still get their news from a daily newspaper. Almost all of us still watch TV.

Google has dubbed audio advertising “audio” rather than “radio” in recognition of the fact that the way we experience music and talk is shifting from an old-fashioned analog system to high-def radio, satellite radio and podcasts. It is possible right now to advertise via all of these mediums, and with the inclusion of special phone numbers and websites it is possible to track how effective your advertising really is.

Through Google’s advertising programs, advertisers will be able to track which ads are actually bringing in revenue in terms of time of day, location and sales made. The innovations being made by Google right now have significance for the future of advertising. As Search Engine Land points out, the tracking available through all types of media will eventually bring a level of accuracy to advertising which it has never seen before.

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