• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, January 17, 2006

The latest news out of Mountain View, Calif. today is that Google has purchased radio ad company dMarc Broadcasting Inc. Google will pay $102 million now, and a total of up to $1.14 billion over the next three years.

The move demonstrates that Google--already brokering magazine and print ads--has ambitions far beyond selling Internet ads. While the notoriously secretive company hasn't said much about its future plans, Tim Armstrong, Google's vice president of advertising sales, acknowledged in a statement that the company "is committed to exploring new ways to extend targeted, measurable advertising to other forms of media."

Google's latest prize doesn't just give the company another inroad into traditional media; it also gives Google's numerous small, local marketers the chance to easily experiment with offline ads. dMarc already uses a technology platform that enables marketers to make buys on the Web. Google plans to integrate that platform with AdWords, which will allow Google to upsell the radio spots to AdWords advertisers.

While it's still far too early to predict how Google's entry into radio advertising will affect the industry, it's clear that the move is likely to increase Madison Avenue's anxiety about company--seen as a threat long before today by many traditional ad execs. Consider, last month at the UBS Media Week conference in New York, Martin Sorrell, chairman-CEO of the world's biggest buyer of media--WPP Group--sounded the alarm about Google's presumed ambitions. "Google has talked directly to advertisers in the United States about media buying exchanges," said Sorrell, adding, "Strange things are going on at the same time."

Many ad execs have to be asking themselves what will happen when Google extends even further into the traditional world by selling TV ads. Google has never explicitly stated that it intends to start selling such spots, but neither has the company shied away from TV--most recently, it partnered with CBS to sell pay-per-view downloads of programs.

While selling content online is far different than selling ads that will appear on TV, it's increasingly clear that Google intends to sells TV ads too--and probably sooner rather than later.