• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, April 14, 2008

Ronning Lipset Radio, an ad sales rep firm for online radio, is bulking up its executive team with new hires from XM Satellite Radio and Yahoo Music. This poaching of digital sales executives, which Lipset says will help meet "increased demand from the media buying community," is just the latest in a flurry of online radio deals that began in 2007.

From XM, Lipset is hiring Dana Detlefson as director of sales for Lipset's southwest operations. Most recently, Detlefson was a senior account manager at XM, and also worked at Carat North America for six years as national radio supervisor. From Yahoo, the company has hired Angie May Cook as director of sales for Lipset's Midwest region. At Yahoo, Cook was a music sales specialist who created and sold custom promotions to Fortune 100 advertisers. Before that, she was director of integrated solutions at Emmis Communications, helping to produce multiplatform campaigns with interactive elements.

Lipset's client portfolio includes AOL Radio, CBS Radio, Yahoo Music's LaunchCast and a network of independent stations, which together reach up to 6 million listeners a week, according to the company.

In July 2007, the company announced a partnership with an online technology firm, Corstarr, to use its Adcor technology for delivering Internet radio ads. Adcor allows broadcasters to set up multiple radio channels and deliver ads across one or all of them, targeting audiences by demographic characteristics and daypart.

It also features an "intelligent" ad algorithm that delivers ads that are appropriate for these specific targeting goals. In the future, Lipset and Corstarr hope to expand the Adcor offerings with online video, social networking and mobile functionality.

Last year saw numerous deals by other radio players. In May 2007, CBS Radio acquired Last.fm, an online radio portal. More recently, they announced a far-reaching audio content and ad-sharing partnership, as CBS also struck a deal with AOL to share content and assume exclusive responsibility for AOL's online audio ad sales.

In July 2007, Katz Media Group acquired Net Radio Sales, renamed Katz Net Radio Sales. Last month, Katz Advantage announced a major reorganization of its marketing operations to better communicate radio's qualities and new capabilities to advertisers, including a major focus on burgeoning Internet offerings.

Also in March, Cox Radio said it will begin providing information from all its U.S. stations to RadioTime, which allows Internet users to browse, search and listen to online radio from terrestrial stations with its RadioGuide interface. The station IDs and other information will appear on Radio Guide alongside the streaming audio. Cox joins about 100 other radio networks and a total of about 100,000 programs on the RadioTime site.

Finally, the Radio Advertising Bureau announced its own reorganization a few weeks ago, with the intention to increase radio's share of ad dollars by putting the spotlight on its new capabilities, including online radio. The RAB also named John Potter as vice president of interactive revenue development.

For most radio broadcasters, the contribution from online sales to total revenue remains small. Recently, Wachovia analyst Marci Ryvicker wrote in her roundup after the SNL/Kagan Radio/TV Summit: "We are at least five (if not 10) years away before new media/digital opportunities have any financial significance in the broadcast space."

Indeed, one estimate puts Internet radio revenues--including new Web-only companies and combining advertising and subscription models--at just $500 million in 2007. That's just 2% of radio's overall revenues.