Google’s Latest Move, If
Successful, Will Change TV Advertising Game
Google has cut
a deal with Nielsen (the dominant TV-ratings company in the U.S.)
that will give the search company access to demographic data for ad
targeting. According to Reuters, “Google will combine the data it
receives from television set top-boxes, with information that
Nielsen provides on viewers by gender and age.”
Google hopes
that the additional layer of targeting will make its TV advertising
sales package even more effective for aiming marketing messages at
the people most likely to respond. The company presently has access
to a relatively small part of the country’s ad inventory...about 14
million homes, through a deal with EchoStar.
Adding the
Nielsen data to its current ad target system, which is used
primarily on the Internet, is likely to make network TV executives
and sales organizations a bit tense. If the system works well, it
could take both the marketing and the pricing of inventory out of
the “hands” that traditionally control it. In other words, Google
could destroy a system for selling TV ads which has been in place
for decades.
It may not
matter that networks and cable systems do not want Google to take
away their roles as middlemen. If the new system works, they are out
of luck...and time.
