Google Announces TV Ads Trial
At Google, we are constantly looking for ways to improve user experience and bring value to advertisers, publishers and partners. Users spend a lot of time watching TV so improving the relevance of advertising information on that medium is important.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google had already framed television as an advertising opportunity in its earlier look at the future of TV ads, then tested advertising around a video service in 2006. The new trial extends that progression from online video toward television viewing.
Coverage of the same announcement identifies EchoStar/Dish as the distribution side of the test, making the move an attempt to apply Google's relevance-focused advertising proposition to satellite-TV inventory rather than merely discuss the market.
First-order effects
- Google gains a live test of whether its advertising approach can make television ad information more relevant for advertisers, publishers and viewers.
- EchoStar/Dish makes satellite-TV ad inventory available for Google's trial, tying a TV distributor to Google's advertising experiment.
Second-order effects
- Established TV ad-sales channels face a new benchmark: Google and EchoStar/Dish will test whether a technology-led seller can make TV inventory more useful to advertisers.
- Advertisers participating in the trial gain a route to evaluate television inventory through Google's system, linking TV buying more closely to the company's existing advertising relationships.
Third-order effects
- If the trial proves that relevance can be improved across TV inventory, television advertising may shift toward intermediaries whose value lies in matching advertisers with audiences rather than solely in controlling distribution.
- The move points to a broader convergence of video and television advertising markets, with ad technology becoming a common layer across viewing formats.
The trend: Google is testing whether its relevance-led advertising model can extend from web and video services into television inventory.