Forget Phones, Google Gives Top Advertisers Google TV
Google's gained quite a reputation for surprising attendees at conferences with an “Oprah” moment of giving them free Android phones. But phones, that's so last year. With Google TV about to launch, Google's upped the giveaway ante …
Context & Ripple Effects
The giveaway is a deliberate escalation of a familiar Google playbook: after years of handing conference attendees free Android phones, the company is now seeding its next screen — putting Google TV hardware directly into the hands of the advertisers whose budgets it wants, ahead of a launch that a leaked Best Buy document (unconfirmed) pegs for October 17th.
It is also the latest move in a TV-ad ambition Google has been signaling since at least its 2005 musings on the future of television advertising, when it first turned to TV ads, and it follows the 2007 concept of an Android-based Google set-top box — this is that idea arriving as actual hardware placed with the buy side rather than consumers.
First-order effects
- Top advertisers get working Google TV devices weeks or months before consumers can buy them, letting agencies build and test campaigns against real hardware while the platform is still pre-launch.
- Google converts its Oprah-style giveaway stunt into a sales motion: the same gesture that built Android goodwill is now aimed squarely at securing launch-day ad commitments for a product category it does not yet own.
Second-order effects
- Broadcast networks and traditional TV ad intermediaries face a buyer class being trained on Google's measurable, search-style ad mechanics before the platform even ships, shifting leverage in negotiations over TV inventory.
- Rival connected-TV device makers must now compete not just on consumer hardware but on which platform advertisers have already had time to experiment with — developer-and-buyer seeding becomes table stakes.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the living room becomes the next auction market: five years of groundwork since Google first framed TV as an addressable ad medium points toward TV buying migrating toward self-serve, data-measured platforms run by search companies rather than network sales forces.
The trend: Google is methodically extending its ad-platform economics from search and mobile into television, using hardware seeding to recruit advertisers before consumers ever see the device.