Google TV Ads: New year, new partner and new technology

Since launching in 2007, Google TV Ads has provided advertisers a smart, measurable way to run national TV campaigns, while at the same time helping our partners (including networks, cable and satellite operators) work towards maximizing revenue from their inventory.  Over the past year, we’ve seen a 6-fold increase in the number of ads aired per day as our household reach across cable and satellite operators has tripled.  Today we’re pleased to continue this momentum, to help both advertisers and partners get the most from TV advertising.

New partner - welcome Cox Media

Cox Media, the advertising division of Cox Communications, the third largest cable operator in the US with more than 6 million total customers, has entered into a strategic partnership with Google TV Ads, adding their inventory to our national TV buying network.  Cox becomes the first major cable industry partner to deploy Google’s next-generation advertising management solution, a major update to the TV Ads platform.

As a result of this partnership, advertisers who use Google TV Ads will have access to inventory on over 75 networks across Cox's channel line up.  Cox Media is available in many cities across the country.

Building upon previously announced inventory deals with DIRECTV, Verizon FiOS, and Viamedia, Google TV Ads has nearly tripled its operator household reach since the start of 2011, to a total of 42 million households nationwide.

For Cox Media, this partnership will deliver new national TV advertisers, particularly those focused on high levels of measurement and accountability in their TV advertising, similar to how they use Google's online advertising products.

Mike Zeigler, Cox Media’s Vice President of Operations and Field Management, told us: “The media industry is changing rapidly.  Our new partnership with Google TV Ads allows us to reach new market segments through a highly automated and efficient distribution platform.  We are pleased to be part of bringing new television opportunities to Google advertisers.”

New ad management solution

As the TV landscape has evolved from a few to hundreds of networks, audience attention has fragmented, making the process of reaching one large audience more challenging.  At the same time, TV ad inventory is split between a number of players - national networks, regional affiliates, cable, and satellite operators. As a result, each has its own slices of inventory to sell - divided across many shows, in disparate regions, on lots of channels, at various times of the day. On its own, each slice may not have a large number of viewers, or enable a major advertiser to reach a nationwide audience.  And it’s time consuming to buy and sell each slice individually.

To solve this problem, Google TV Ads is announcing an update to its service that enables operators to easily opt-in and contribute these narrow slices into the Google TV Ads national  inventory pool.  As thousands of these slices are aggregated, this pool represents a large national audience that marketers can then customize to their audience goals.

Cox is the first major cable operator to choose this new Google TV Ads ad management solution, and moving forward we will be integrating with new partners, including Suddenlink Communications, which reaches 1.2M households.

The new solution aims to deliver higher returns for our operators while integrating with existing industry technology, streamlining time-consuming inventory management tasks such as ordering, trafficking and reporting.

Bendbroadband, a Bend, Oregon-based cable company, was the first to trial this new platform, starting in May 2011.  Tim Olson, General Manager of Ad Sales for Zolo Media, a division of Bendbroadband, told us: “Google TV Ads generates more revenue, uses our inventory more efficiently and is overall easier to work with...we’re generating 4-5 times the revenue we used to.”

While we’ve come far in 2011, going forward we’ll keep working to help our partners maximize their advertising revenues.  Our advertisers will be happy to know we’ll also be adding more inventory to our system by expanding our relationship with Cox Media and establishing partnerships with additional operators beginning with Suddenlink Communications.  At the same time, Google TV Ads will continue to provide the same level of precision, flexibility and measurability that our advertisers have come to rely on.

You can find out more about Google TV Ads at google.com/tvads.

Posted by Mark Piesanen, Director of Strategic Partner Development, Google TV Ads