Terry Heaton takes a look at the recent announcement of a deal between Google and XM satellite radio and the move by ad trading and placement service Softwave into TV ad sales.

The Google-XM deal gives Google access to XM's non-music channels: " As part of the deal, the companies said Google advertisers will have "a simple, automated way to reach XM's millions of subscribers nationwide." XM, in turn, will gain access to Google's large and small advertisers to offer relevant, targeted messages to their subscribers. The deal also signals a more aggressive advertising move for XM, a premium radio service that derives its revenues primarily from subscriber fees."

Softwave "piggybacks on the interest generated by the Adsdaq initiative spearheaded by eBay at the behest of big advertisers, like Wal-Mart." CEO Josh Wexler explains that his company's capabilities " include campaign planning by region and demo target, establishing pricing, negotiations, cancellations, and campaign acceptance. SoftWave can deliver spots, and executes all back-office functionality through an extensive digital infrastructure."

Terry notes that in both cases "we have some smart people with deep pockets trying to blend Internet technologies with offline advertising placements, and that may sound -- at least on the surface -- like good news for broadcasting."

Yet that isn't quite the case. Terry continues: "Broadcasters need to keep a close eye on this, because while Google's efforts heretofore to bring its technologies to the offline world have failed, they are a tenacious and formidable competitor with deep, deep pockets. We need to view them as the Wal-Mart of the advertising world and ourselves as the neighborhood grocer. As [Mark] Zagorski points out, every revolution comes at a price, and Google is now fighting an industry with "deep personal legacies, relationships on both sides of the aisle (salesmen and agencies), and an ingrained infrastructure of people that need to keep paying their kids' tuition bills." It will not go down without a fight."