Peter Smyth: We have no deal with Google
While the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Google had signed deals with Emmis and Greater Media, Greater Media CEO Peter Smyth says they have no group-wide deal for his inventory. From the WSJ story: "In coming weeks, [Google] will announce a test that will eventually lead to a service allowing anybody to use the Google Audio Ads service to purchase radio advertising...The service is currently limited to advertisers that work through a Google sales force to tap into some stations at a small number of radio groups, including Emmis Communications Corp. and Greater Media Inc."
Greater Media has had a local relationship with dMarc prior to their acquisition by Google, and have been working with them on an evaluation basis at their Detroit stations. An Emmis spokesperson told us the same thing: "We had a deal with dMarc since January, before the purchase by Google. So there's not a new deal with Google. Some people have concluded that we must have sold inventory to Google, but we haven't had any kind of discussion like that."
Smyth says they reached no long term conclusions based on that evaluation, which will not conclude for another 90 days. He tells RBR: "I do not have a deal with Google. We had had conversations with them--some members of our staff and our legal team-but after what I saw with them moving into the local marketplaces and some of the comments that Eric [Schmidt-Google CEO] had made about the pricing models and things like that, I thought, 'You know what, I've got to see where this is going.' And we also own a newspaper company. I'm just not going to be out there discounting inventory all over the country, and putting another competitor into the marketplace."
He adds, "I was shocked when I saw that in the paper this morning, because I told our general counsel just last night 'We're not doing this deal'...They had better do a retraction because it's not true. I do not have a deal with them, I signed nothing. And I'm pretty angry about it. I'm pretty angry that somebody would say something like that when my name is not on any document."
What were they pitching you?
"They want us to give them our excess inventory-the stuff we're not selling. But what's remnant? If we do our job properly and kind of reinvent our selling process ourselves, what do we need that for? What are you bringing to the table that makes the unique selling proposition different? What you're trying to do is get a piece of our inventory. And I'm glad that we waited and saw what this was all about-in them hiring local sales departments, etc. I want to see where this is going, but I am not going to go into competition with myself, nor am I going to do anything to go against Katz or the people that nationally represent me...or compromise our own sales departments across the country-that's ridiculous."
So they're telling you they are going to go to their existing AdWords clients and say, "We can make you a radio ad, too?"
Said Smyth: "I guess that's the pitch, but I would like to know when the pitch stops moving. I mean I knew nothing about all of this localism and newspapers and the other. That was never told to me. That's not the way I do business. I would like to see Google issue an apology to Greater Media. They owe it, because it's not true."
