EBay to auction advertising on U.S. radio stations

BERKELEY, California (Reuters) - Online auctioneer eBay Inc. said on Tuesday it is ready to begin auctioning advertising airtime on 2,300 participating U.S. radio stations, expanding on an existing plan to sell cable television ads.

The move, which puts eBay into competition with Web search leader Google Inc.'s recent expansion into radio advertising, involved eBay partnering with Bid4Spots to power what it calls the eBay Media Marketplace for Radio.

The new U.S. auction market for radio advertising will go live on Wednesday and include both conventional terrestrial radio and Internet radio advertising. Stations in all of the 300 top-ranked radio markets are covered, eBay said.

EBay has said it sees the hundreds of thousands of sellers in its online auction markets as potential advertisers within the media marketplaces it is seeking to develop. The ad auction push has met with some resistance from broadcasters who fear the auctions could put stiff pressure on advertising rates.

Last week, women-oriented cable network Oxygen said it had become the first cable programmer to use the eBay Media Marketplace for Cable TV to sell national spots on its programs. EBay said its radio ad auctions will focus on last-minute ad buys.

"This flexibility enables stations to be extremely aggressive in their pricing," an eBay spokesman said.

Advertisers and ad agencies can sign up at http://www.ebaymediamarketplace.com. Bid4Spots is a two-year-old start-up company based in Encino, California.