Google, EchoStar Announce Automated TV Ad System

Amid mounting speculation about Google’s plans for TV advertising, the Mountain View, CA-based giant announced a groundbreaking partnership with EchoStar Communications to introduce the first automated system for buying, selling, delivering and measuring television ads on EchoStar DISH Network's 125 national satellite programming networks.

Under the agreement, Google will have access to a portion of the DISH Network's advertising inventory that spans all channels and dayparts. The national test is on an invitation-only basis to advertisers.

"Our partnership with EchoStar is important for us as we begin to offer a TV advertising platform broadly," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt in the official press statement. "We think we can add value to this important medium by delivering more relevant ads to viewers, providing better accountability for advertisers and better monetize inventory for TV operators and programmers."

Adds Michael Steib, Director of Google TV ad sales; "We will be receiving aggregated data. While being very sensitive to user privacy, we are able to learn how many households watched each ad. Specifically, we're making available second-by-second commercial measurement. The end result should be more relevance for consumers and better results for advertisers.

It develops into this digital ecosystem where we are helping the advertisers put the ads in front of the right audience and the viewer will see more and more relevant ads," added Steib.

Google has been testing the system with Astound Cable, a small cable provider, in the Concord, CA DMA.

"Ours is the only end-to-end system with auction-based pricing, full digital workflow and detailed commercial measurement to inform the advertiser and agency on the effectiveness of their campaign," said Steib.

The system is intended to add efficiency to the entire buying, selling and placing process, Steib said. It will use a Web-based system like AdWords. Advertisers will bid for inventory with an auction-based system and indicate their CPM bids. Google will run the auction--and report back in 24 hours whether the advertiser won the auction and if the ad ran, where it ran and the number of household boxes delivered.

Advertisers can then adjust their pricing based on how well creative performed in which conditions.

Participants in the beta uniformly pointed to the real-time measurement elements of the test as revolutionary because within 24 hours, advertisers will know not only what ads have been viewed, but where in the ads viewers have tuned out. Advertisers will also get to see how their ads perform in different dayparts.

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Source: MediaPost