Fragflation and radio text ads

The NYT reports on a new form of radio marketing.

Big radio companies like Clear Channel Communications and Infinity Broadcasting are equipping some stations with technology that broadcasts not just commercials but text messages that appear on car radio displays. And advertisers like First Charter Bank in Charlotte, N.C., which will use the approach in a campaign beginning in late January, are signing on to see whether extra text can give their spots extra heft.

The technology - called R.D.S., for radio data system - has long been common in Europe and available in the United States, where it is gaining as cars increasingly come ready for the technology and radio stations compete more fiercely for ad revenue against satellite radio and other media.

Really terrible idea - reflective of a bankruptcy of the marketing imagination. The article quotes someone attributing this desparate measure to fragflation: "'the fragmentation of audiences combined with media inflation". Google turns up no hits, so it must be a true neologism.