Google TV Ads: A Year in Review

2009 has been a break through year for our advertisers, inventory partners, and the TV Ads platform. We have worked with thousands of advertisers to target TV campaigns more effectively, and our network has grown to include 17 inventory partners. Google TV Ads exceeded 100 billion served impressions in 2009, as we continue to engineer solutions for better targeted and more relevant ads. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on an exciting year and thank our partners and advertisers who have enabled each success.

In the last year we established key partnerships with industry leaders to bring more inventory and technology driven measurement and targeting capabilities to TV and video advertisers. Here are some highlights:

• In 2009, our list of inventory partners grew to a total of 17 with the addition of GSN, CBS College Sports, Outdoor Channel, Sky Angel, MGM HD, and AETN's History International. With the addition of these partners, advertisers can now target nearly 100 national cable networks right from their computers.
• Uncovering the right media to reach a targeted audience is now easier for advertisers thanks to the integration of Nielsen's PRIZM segmentation data. Advertisers can choose from 66 PRIZM segments as well as demographic and interest data to find the right audience profile and generate a list of targeted shows and dayparts that most effectively reach that audience.
• Our users asked for a simpler way to build targeted and effective campaigns and in response, we unveiled the Campaign Builder tool. Simply select desired audience attributes to generate customizable campaigns in minutes, complete with efficient and effective bid suggestions.
• Data, data, data: advertisers and agencies want more robust data sources to optimize their TV buys. To deliver on this need, we partnered with TiVo to license their anonymized set-top-box data and in 2010, we're working with TiVo to provide our customers with even more second-by-second set-top-box data to measure campaigns more effectively.
• We were especially excited to unveil Google TV Ads Online in April 2009 as an extension of our TV platform, allowing advertisers to deploy their ads across YouTube and 100+ partner video sites. Advertisers can now truly bridge the gap between online and offline screens and place a seamless video buy across platforms.

And finally, amongst the thousands of advertisers who have run more accountable ads with Google TV Ads are Coldwell Banker and chickdowntown.com who shared their success stories with us in 2009. Coldwell Banker needed a measurable way to target real estate lovers across all of cable without placing hundreds of separate media buys. They were able to achieve this through the Google TV Ads platform, effectively driving 150M real estate aficionados to their YouTube brand channel.

Chickdowntown.com, an online retail boutique, had tried TV before but found it to be cumbersome, insufficiently targeted, and expensive. They tried TV again this time with Google TV Ads and ran contextually targeted campaigns that fit within their budgets and brought a 25% increase in website traffic within just the first month!

It is less than three years since our beta launch. Thanks to the advertisers and inventory partners who have joined with us to make TV advertising better, our platform is now executing millions of more accountable advertising transactions. This is still only the beginning of our commitment to our partners to deliver better TV and video advertising, and we could not be more excited for 2010.

Posted by Mike Steib, Director of Google TV Ads and Emerging Platforms