IMHO: Paid Search Is Too Expensive For Radio

... at least that's MY experience. (from the don't believe everything you read department: "Paid Search To Acquire, and Email To Retain, Online Retail Customers")

A&O country radio clients have been experimenting with paid search to build cume and recruit competitive station listeners to try our radio stations and have found the results to be very inefficient. Dollar for dollar, good old fashioned highly-targeted telemarketing and direct mail gets a lot more for the money, especially for a format with specific geographic hot and cold pockets for ultra-core listeners.

Have you been trying new media? (i.e. we love social networking to find and grow relationships based on music affinity, for example) What is your experience?