Marketing Pilgrim

When you visit Las Vegas, you can’t help but bump into magicians and illusionists, ready to show off their slight of hand skills. Even Penn & Teller would be impressed with Google’s ability to turn $1000, spent on Google Audio Ads, into $3,000.

For the full explanation, I’ll need the help of my wonderful assistant “blockquote”:

When you spend $1,000 airing your Audio Ads campaign, you’ll receive $2,000.00* towards your next campaign. And, if you use the Ad Creation Marketplace to create a custom ad, we’ll contribute $300 to the cost of your ad creation. That means you can earn up to $2,300 towards future Audio Ads campaigns.

Here are the details:

• Complete and submit this request form telling us about your business and advertising goals.
• An AdWords specialist will customize a radio campaign proposal aligned with your business goals, usually within ten business days. Be sure to list contact information so we can email the proposal to you.
• Review the proposal and run an Audio Ads campaign by December 31, 2007, spending at least $1,000 on that campaign.
• If you are eligible*, you’ll receive $2,000 towards future campaigns!

Not a bad deal–especially if you were considering testing Google Audio Ads anyway. But having run similar promotions in my life, I can guess there are 1 of 3 influencing factors behind the deal.

1. Google Audio Ads is struggling. Probably the most likely culprit. How many of you are spending money on it?
2. Google Audio Ads are overpriced. Anytime you can give away $2000 of your product–when earning only $1000–you likely have very good margins on the product.
3. Google Audio Ads are going for the jugular. Maybe the product is doing very well. Maybe Google just wants to use the promotion to ensure its dominance going into 2008.

What do you think? Any other motives I’ve missed?

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