Marissa Mayer is Thinking

About non-intrusive advertising

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, and former Googlie spokesperson, believes there is a way to offer non-intrusive advertising for mobile devices — which would mean radio if we choose to think of our medium that way — just as Google found a non-intrusive way to make money from search.

There’s usually a way you can introduce advertising such that it’s not intrusive, that it actually adds value to the end-user and that it actually enhances the experience.”

Before Google, all forms of mass advertising was based on interruption, and the irritation of having content interrupted to see or hear messages for products we don’t care about led to products like the Ad Trap, that I blogged about Monday.

I don’t know if Marissa is right, though she’s pretty smart, and she’s a lot closer to this subject than I am.

The point is, we — in Radio — should be thinking along similar lines.

We should be thinking of ways advertising can enhance the experience of listening to our stations.

I know. It sounds ridiculous.

But so did Google before we started using it.

*To listen to the full 30-minute interview Marissa gave to Bloomberg TV, click HERE.