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

Over the past year, Google TV Ads has been investing in new features to help our advertisers make smarter decisions about their TV campaigns.

The Google TV Ads team would like to invite you to a webinar on Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 to discuss the changing landscape of TV advertising for B2B marketers and how features that tie TV to online can help you better reach the B2B consumer on TV. Members of our B2B sales team will specifically cover:

• The changing TV landscape - reaching the B2B consumer on TV today vs. in the ‘Three Network World’
• How Google TV Ads is working to make your TV buy smarter, including:
• Search Triggers: Harnessing the power of Google Search to influence your TV buy
• Web Attribution: Linking TV ad exposure to website visitation

We hope you can join us!

What: Making B2B TV Buying Smarter Webinar
When: Wednesday, November 9, 2011  2:30-3:00pm EST/11:30-12:00pm PST
How: Register here

Not a B2B marketer?  Don't worry!  This is just the first in a series of upcoming webinars from Google TV Ads.  Stay tuned for more announcements in the near future. 

Posted by David Kagan, Product Marketing Manager, Google TV Ads

When Searches take place online, business usually follows.  Advertisers utilizing Google’s AdWords and Insights for Search data have watched this pattern emerge for years, and we’re excited to now bring similar capabilities to our TV advertisers. As of today, we are pleased to announce the launch of Search Triggers, a new tool offered by Google TV Ads that uses national search trend data to control when and how you deliver your TV ads.

Let’s take a look at how this works. Suppose you own a business that sells grills.  The summertime is when you generally run television advertising.  But what if it’s a rainy weekend? By tapping into the power of search data, Search Triggers watches for real-time changes in the demand for terms you specify, such as “grills” or “charcoal.”  When query volume spikes or declines, the Search Triggers tool automatically adjusts your daily budget up or down accordingly each day so that you’re delivering the right message with appropriate frequency at the right time.

Using search data to optimize your TV campaigns is another way that Google TV Ads is working to make your TV buy smarter.  For more information, or to get started with Google TV Ads, visit google.com/tvads.

Update: Read more about Search Triggers on Mashable

Posted by Jody Shapiro, Google TV Ads Product Manager

       Since announcing our inventory partnership with DIRECTV in August 2010, Google TV Ads has offered advertisers the ability to place their TV spots on a broad selection of national inventory across 11 its networks.  Today we are pleased to share that we have grown our DIRECTV reach to include five new networks.  Now when you plan your TV campaign with Google TV Ads, you will have more inventory from the following networks with which to target your audience on:

• FOX Soccer Channel: America's premier destination for the world's game, FOX Soccer Channel offers unprecedented coverage of live and premier world-class soccer, news and original shows throughout the year.
• Gospel Music Channel: The only network with a truly non-controversial programming slate of movies, dramas, comedies and music, Gospel Music Channel is America's favorite channel for uplifting entertainment.
• Logo: Appealing to a broad range of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender viewers and their friends and family, Logo features a vast library of major film titles, documentaries, and quality original shows and specials.
• RFD-TV: Devoted to rural issues, concerns, and interests, much of the programming of RFD-TV is concerned with the culture of farming and agriculture.
• TV Games: The leading horse racing television network in the U.S

       Adding these networks expands our already strong reach on DIRECTV, which includes networks such as the TV Guide Network, Fox Business Network, Current TV, and more. Along with our previously announced operator partners including Dish Network, Verizon FiOS, and ViaMedia, Google TV Ads now offers the ability to reach up to 35M households across the US.

For more information on how to get started with Google TV Ads, visit www.google.com/tvads today.

Posted by Sanjeev Das, Software Engineer, Google TV Ads

*Network descriptions sourced from the Cable Advertising Bureau

At Google we love data. We feel that the more of it you have, the better decisions you’re likely to make. It’s for this reason that we’re excited to introduce Web Attribution, Google TV Ads’ newest feature that, for the first time, allows you to measure the impact your TV ads have on driving traffic to your website.

So how’s it work? Web Attribution links historical website visitation trends from Google Analytics with your TV campaign data in AdWords. By establishing a baseline of typical web traffic patterns, we look for deviations from the norm. Matching these deviations with the exact times and places your TV Ads air on our system, we are able to attribute visits that resulted from exposure to your ads. Daily reporting of your Attributed Visits, as well as the Cost per Attributed Visit, will be available on a per-airing basis so you can see which networks, programs, and ad creatives are delivering the best results for your campaign.

This is just another way that Google TV Ads is working to make your TV buy smarter. We encourage you to find out how to get started with Web Attribution today. You can also always find more information about Google TV Ads at google.com/tvads.

Posted by Jody Shapiro, Product Manager, Google TV Ads

This past November we announced that we had struck a partnership agreement with Verizon FiOS, one of the fastest growing television providers in the nation. Today we are pleased to announce that we have completed integration of FiOS’ 4M households into Google TV Ads, opening up inventory across over 50 networks, including AMC, ESPN, Discovery, Fox News, MTV, and other popular channels. With the addition of this new inventory to our system, Google TV Ads has now extended its reach to more than 25% of all US television households.

To ensure a smooth transition, current advertisers’ campaigns will automatically extend to this new inventory when eligible, achieving maximum reach for their message.

For more information or to learn more about advertising with Google TV Ads, visit www.google.com/tvads.

Posted by Sanjeev Das, Software Engineer, Google TV Ads

We’ve all heard the old adage about not knowing which 50% of your advertising is wasted. Well, TV advertisers often tell us this is absolutely true. And with the proliferation of online ad formats that are highly targeted and measurable, the impact of TV ads can feel even more abstract by comparison. It doesn't help that typical TV buys are often slow to provide data, and that data is often very limited.

The good news is that TV advertising technology has been advancing rapidly, helping advertisers better understand how TV helps them achieve their marketing objectives. Platforms like Google TV Ads are bringing targeting, measurement and speed to TV like never before. Unfortunately, too many advertisers don’t know these solutions exist.

It’s time that changed. To that end, we’re excited to announce the launch of an advertising campaign to spread the word about Google TV Ads and its ability to make your TV buy smarter.

If you frequent sites like AdAge or MediaPost, you are likely to see our campaign over the next couple of months.  You can also check out our new campaign website at google.com/smarterTVads.

Posted by Eric Meyerson, Head of TV and Video Ads Marketing 

We're thrilled to announce the second annual TV for All contest, where businesses have the opportunity to win $25,000 in national advertising on Google TV Ads, and online video partner sites including YouTube.

We originally launched this contest last year and received nearly 250 submissions. Three winners, including Owners.com, won free TV media through Google and successfully extended their brands across the nation.

"It's always exciting to see what other marketers think of your work," says George Karavaras of Owners.com on why the company entered TV for All in 2009. The best part, he says, is that "it doesn't take a lot of time or money to create a high impact TV ad through Google's creative network."

Now it's your turn! Entering is easy: simply create a video ad for your business, upload it to YouTube and submit it to our TV for All Channel between September 15th and October 12th. If you don't have a video ad or the tools to create one, professional tools by SpotMixer will be available for free to help entrants make polished ads in just minutes.

Three winners whose ads best exemplify creativity and a compelling message will receive $25,000, $15,000 or $10,000 in national TV and online video advertising using Google AdWords.

If you're never promoted your business using TV and video, then the TV for All contest is your chance to get started. Check back for more details as our contest progresses and visit www.youtube.com/tvforall for more details and to enter today.

Posted by Neha Mandal, Product Marketing Manager for Google TV Ads

If you've run television campaigns before, you know that sight, sound and motion can truly create meaningful connections between brands and customers. So we thought it would be useful to write about a complementary ad format observed by Neilsen to increase brand recall of TV ads by as much as 35%. Google enables you to extend the power of your TV campaign to audiences online by running in-stream video ads. Advertisers can run :15 or :30 second video ads on YouTube and over 90 partner sites across our network to reach engaged online video viewers. In-stream ads enable you to elevate video advertising to an interactive level by enabling click-throughs to designated landing pages. If your goal is to drive offline activity, don't worry: we've also read reports of increased offline response to premium online video advertising.


The unique value of in-stream is its ability to merge the benefits of TV ads and online advertising by providing an engaging experience that is clickable and more directly trackable. Leverage free tools like the Adwords Placement Tool or the YouTube Video Targeting Tool to find content that best reaches your defined audience and customize campaigns through geo-targeting, audience targeting, daypart limitations and enabling conversion tracking to drive and measure effective video impressions.

Sample of in-stream partner sites

Ready to get started? To learn even more about this ad format, we encourage you to view our recent webinar featuring the YouTube Video Targeting Tool which will guide you through the best ways to extend the reach of your TV campaigns through in-stream.

Posted by Andrew Stinger, Account Manager for Google TV Ads

In our final installment of the Power Users series, we’ll cover advanced reporting and measurement capabilities of our platform. As you may know, Google TV Ads delivers precise reporting including impression counts, tuning data and cost metrics; this report type is called the ‘Played Spots Report.’ Beyond these data points, advertisers can also choose to include audience reporting metrics as well.

Our system merges aggregated demographic and psychographic information with viewership data from millions of anonymized set-top boxes to report on the audience composition for your ad airings. Audience metrics include Nielsen VPVH, household income, and category interest information amongst others. Easy to run reports detail the composition, or index for each metric whether or not you chose to target those specific metrics in your campaign. This allows you to see an overall picture of exactly who your ads reached or potentially can reach. Insider’s Tip: Selecting the audience measurement option while creating your ‘Played Spots Report’ will allow you to measure how many W25-54 are REALLY watching your ad, or how Project Runway indexes for consumers with certain interests such as photography, hiking, and over 30 others.



Another useful report type is the ‘Summary Report’ which allows you to analyze how well specific networks and programs deliver against an audience and your clearance goals. For instance, you can run a ‘Summary Report’ to find out which programs are delivering the highest VPVH for W25-54, or combine all played spots on ESPN to see how the overall HHI compares against all spots aired on Speed.

The last report and final tip we have for you, is the ‘Reach and Frequency Report.’ Insider’s Tip: Imagine how powerful it would be to understand not only the reach, but also the frequency of your TV campaigns over a given time frame. As seasoned TV buyers know, understanding how often you are reaching a given audience is as important in determining ad effectiveness as measuring reach. Are viewers motivated to visit your website or purchase from you after seeing your ad just once? Or perhaps the sales cycle is longer and repeat views are needed to move the needle. The ‘Reach and Frequency Report’ makes measuring this extremely easy, and can be viewed weekly or monthly to give you a sense of your creative penetration over the specified date range.



This brings us to the end of our Power Users series, we hope you have found these tips and tricks useful. As our product continues to develop and new product features arise, we’ll be sure to keep you posted and in the know.


Posted by Katie Mason, Account Manager for Google TV Ads

We’re back with another installment of our power users series, where we unveil advanced features and tips that can help advertisers better manage and optimize their TV campaigns. Today, we’ll cover some newer features that are designed to give advertisers more control over where and how ads air within a given campaign. More control is always a good thing, right?

For those of you who have already run several Google TV Ads campaigns, you may have experienced certain campaigns being over-saturated on a couple of networks. Because our auction optimizes for efficiency and value, advertisers may find that their campaign delivers more frequency on a few networks rather than spreading evenly over all of your selected targets. There are now two advanced settings that allow more control over reach and frequency. Within the ‘Settings’ tab of your campaigns, select ‘I prefer my ads aired more often on the national networks’ which will direct the system to try winning spots on our largest national partners first. Note that with this setting, you are opting for a larger reach rather than frequency or efficiency.

The second advanced setting that falls into this bucket is also within the ‘Settings’ tab. Choosing ‘I prefer my ads spread more evenly across networks and times’ will attempt to optimize for reach within your targets. Rather than allowing the auction to accumulate as many of the most efficient spots as possible, this setting assumes that you would rather pay a bit more to have a larger reach across a more varied set of networks and dayparts.


Often times, advertisers want to target specific programs, but have strict daypart restrictions; a situation that was previously tricky to solve for as it required manual blocking of programs that fall within undesirable dayparts. We recently released a feature that makes this much easier and more efficient for advertisers. Just like you can select flights dates for a campaign, you can now choose to simply block specific days and times, also through the ‘Settings’ tab of any campaign. Once you’ve blocked time periods at the campaign level, you are free to target any networks and programs you wish, and our system will ensure that you never air during restricted times!


Finally, you can now block Paid Programming uniformly across an entire campaign. This may not always be the best option if Paid Programming is efficient and produces a positive ROI on your campaigns. However, if you know such content is ineffective, you can now universally block that content from any campaign within the ‘Settings’ tab.


Now that you’re armed with more controls and better targeting capabilities, we hope that you will achieve even greater success using Google TV Ads. Check back next week with our third and final installment of the Power Users series.

Posted by Katie Mason, Associate Account Manager for Google TV Ads

At Google TV Ads, we're constantly working to improve our platform to help advertisers find and target the right audiences. To this end, we're proud to announce a partnership with Nielsen's PRIZM lifestyle segmentation product, yet another feature which allows advertisers to hone in on the right audiences with Google TV Ads.

This partnership brings more layers of audience data to our existing targeting tools. In addition to demographic and interest dimensions from Nielsen and Equifax already available in our targeting tools, advertisers will now be able to layer on PRIZM segments to find their audience on TV through Google TV Ads. PRIZM categorizes US households into 66 unique segments, using attributes such as lifestage, income, social group, home ownership, employment, and education.

Sample PRIZM segments include:

• New Empty Nests – with their grown-up children recently out of the house, New Empty Nests is composed of upscale older Americans who pursue active–and activist–lifestyles. This is the top-ranked segment for all-inclusive travel packages;
• New Homesteaders – young, middle-class families with comfortable, child-centered lifestyles; and
  
• Young Digerati – the nation's tech-savvy singles and couples living in fashionable neighborhoods on the urban fringe.
  

How does it work? Advertisers simply select a PRIZM cluster in the Google TV Ads interface, and receive recommendations on which TV networks, dayparts, and programs are popular with that cluster. Advertisers can then add the media they'd like to target and air ads within 24 hours of building a campaign.

(Click on the image for a full-size version)

This extended relationship between Nielsen and Google complements and builds on our existing audience targeting tools and offers advertisers better targeting capabilities. We hope that all of these tools and data sources will help advertisers target their TV Ads more effectively, while allowing inventory owners to increase the value of their content.

Do you know where to find your target audience on TV? Use Nielsen PRIZM through Google TV Ads to find out today!

Posted by Bob Meese, Business Development Manager for Google TV Ads

Google TV Ads makes it easy for advertisers of all sizes to reach customers watching television. These days, many full-length television programs are also available for Internet users to watch online. These programs may appear in various places, including the websites of the networks which originally broadcast them and on other sites that specialize in video content. What if an advertiser wants to reach the audience of a particular program, no matter whether they're watching on a television or online?

We're excited to announce the beta launch of Google TV Ads Online. This is a new feature of Google TV Ads that lets advertisers place commercials into the ad breaks of TV programs watched online. It works in the same way as Google TV Ads: advertisers can target specific programs and select their cost-per-thousand (CPM) bid. Based on their targets, budget and bid, ads are inserted in the same program breaks that were designed for advertising when the programs first aired. (Ads may also be shown "pre-roll", before the program begins, or after the online presentation of the program "post-roll.") And like Google TV ads, we provide advertisers with measurement tools that give greater insight into how their ads perform with users.

One website where viewers are consuming more and more full-length content online is YouTube. Today, YouTube launched a new destination for full-length shows and movies, and advertisers will be able to use Google TV Ads Online to reach the millions of people who come to YouTube to watch this content. That's not only good for advertisers, but content partners who are looking to generate revenue from their videos online. Ads will also be shown on other websites that carry full-length video programs.

Google TV Ads Online is still in beta and available to advertisers by invitation only. If you're interested in learning more about it or would like to be considered for the program, please contact Erin Bouchier at erinb@google.com.

Posted by Geoff Smith, Product Manager for Google TV Ads

Are you curious to know exactly how effective your TV ad campaigns are, but have not been tracking your TV campaigns with unique phone numbers or URLs? Worry no more. In addition to the TV Campaigns reports discussed in this post, Google Analytics offers two great ways to track your TV campaign effectiveness.

1. Direct Traffic Report
When your customers type your URL directly into their browser, this traffic is classified as direct traffic. All of the TV viewers who type your website URL into their browsers will fall into this category. Therefore, it is important to monitor how your direct traffic is influenced during the time of your active TV campaign.

To access the Direct Traffic report, log in to Google Analytics and choose Traffic Sources -> Direct Traffic. Make sure you select the date range that corresponds to your active TV campaign. The example below features data from a real campaign, and you can see that there is a clear lift in traffic when the TV campaign was running (shown with green labels).

(Click the image for a full-size version)

2. Non-paid search traffic
Your customers may search for your company or product on their favorite search engine instead of visiting your website directly. To get a more complete picture of the effect of your Google TV campaign, it's important to monitor your non-paid search traffic as well. Non-paid search traffic is traffic that originates from the natural search results of search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. These visitors are accounted for in the Search Engines report.

To access your non-paid search traffic, login to Google Analytics and choose Traffic Sources -> Search Engines. Then click the "non-paid" link to filter out any paid traffic from the engines. In the example below, you can see a noticeable increase in non-paid search traffic on days with active TV Ads (shown with green labels).

(Click the image for a full-size version)

We hope this post provides you with some simple and powerful tools to measure the effectiveness of your Google TV Ads campaign.

Posted by David Wurtz, Associate Product Manager for Google TV Ads

This is a big week for the TV Ads team at Google!

Not only are the latest 2 NBCU networks, Oxygen and Sci-Fi, going live, but the first of the two Crown Media networks, Hallmark Movie Channel (HMC), will also have inventory generally available across all day parts through the Google TV Ads platform.

This week's new network additions brings a little something for everyone. Both Hallmark Movie Channel and Oxygen offer a great way to reach adult women. Hallmark Movie Channel reaches 10 million homes with family-friendly programming and movies, while Oxygen reaches 74 million homes with original programming and content that's bold and engaging. Sci-Fi has historically provided strong reach with adult men, but more and more women are also becoming fans. Sci-Fi reaches 95 million homes with science fiction movies and original series.

If you don't have campaigns already setup that target these networks, you can access this inventory, by creating a new TV campaign in your AdWords account. Then, on the "Target campaign" page, choose any of our 3 new networks as your target, set the CPM and budget, upload your ad with the recommended technical requirements and you'll be entered into the auction. Those are the simple steps that you'll need to take to see your ad playing on these national networks.

We're working hard to provide advertisers with the option to reach even more of the right audience. There's more to come soon!

Posted by Lana Harel, Technical Account Manager for Google TV Ads

This week, we're pleased to announce the addition of national inventory on MSNBC to the Google TV Ads platform. Some of you may already be running ads on MSNBC on the Dish Network inventory available in our system. Now, as a result of our partnership with NBC Universal Google TV Ads advertisers can reach over 91 million households who watch MSNBC.

MSNBC network offers the latest news programming, including programs like Dateline and Meet the Press. Advertisers who have already been targeting MSNBC, available through our partnership with Dish Network, will automatically be included in the auction for the new national network inventory, provided that their ad meets our technical requirements. We can help you identify whether your budget and bid are likely to cover the networks and dayparts you've selected; simply click on the "Calculate Weekly Estimates" button on the Set Pricing screen. Learn more about estimated impressions and cost.

To access this inventory, simply log into your AdWords account and begin by creating a new campaign. On the "Target campaign" page, choose MSNBC as a target network. Next, upload your ad, making sure it meets all recommended technical requirements. Then, once you set the CPM and budget, you'll be entered into the auction. After your ad plays, we will give you detailed reports that measure number of impressions, CPM and audience retention for each ad airing.

We're look forward to continuing to expand our platform to include more inventory.

Posted by Meredith Papp for Google TV Ads

Last week we hosted Video View, Google's first event designed specifically for the media planning community, in our New York offices. This event brought together over 200 media planners and executives from the agency world to learn more about Google TV Ads, the Google Content Network, and YouTube. Themes that emerged from the event focused on: targeting your audience with precision and the growing convergence between online and offline media.

Marketing the President
To kick-off the event, keynote speaker Jim Margolis, senior strategist to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, talked about the importance of consistency in driving a message to consumers, as well as the significance of media convergence in reaching your audience. "We embraced technology from the very start… what we did online and what we did on traditional media such TV had to go together, and if it was to work then they had to feed off each other," Margolis said. He also discussed the campaign's strategy in harnessing new technologies such as cell phones and YouTube to organize voters young and old.

Reaching Your Audience With Google TV Ads
The TV Ads team focused on how to do more with less in this challenging economy. Matt Derella, a senior sales manager from the TV Ads team, talked about how to use audience search and program targeting features on Google TV Ads to reach your target customer more efficiently. Matt said: "You plan in IMAX, knowing everything about your target customer. But you are forced to activate in black and white. With Google TV Ads, you can plan and activate in IMAX, and target who you're looking for."

The 2009 Google Video View Summit gave attendees a unified view of how Google can help them reach their audience efficiently using the strength of Google TV Ads, Google Content Network, and YouTube. You can learn more about our event at the Video View brand channel: http://www.youtube.com/videoview09.

Posted by Deeksha Hebbar for Google TV Ads

The Google TV Ads team is hard at work building tools to help you create efficient TV campaigns. A few months ago, we launched new Program Targeting and Demographic Search tools, which enable you to reach the right audience when your message is most relevant. This week, we've enhanced the program targeting tool with the launch of Seasonal Searches.

Seasonal searches allows you to review and select programs that are related to a particular season or event that may be relevant to your business. For example, if you are a sporting goods store looking to advertise specials during the upcoming college basketball tournament, simply select "March Madness" from the seasonal searches list, and we'll show you relevant programs such as "NCAA March Madness Central" and "College Basketball Scoreboard". This new feature makes it easy to see the upcoming events that may be relevant to your audience.

To try a seasonal search, look directly beneath the Program Targeting search box. You'll see the upcoming events listed. Clicking on any of these events will show you the TV programs related to that event.

(Click on the image for a full-size version)

(Click on the image for a full-size version)

Posted by David Wurtz, Associate Product Manager and Jeff Lu, Software Engineer for Google TV Ads

Are you a direct response focused advertiser who is challenged to do more with less? Join a discussion hosted by the Google TV Ads team on maximizing your TV advertising investment.

Learn how with Google TV Ads you can:

• Use technology to get better CPLs.
• Use desired audience attributes such as household income to target relevant networks and dayparts.
• Manage and optimize your campaigns using precise performance reports.
  

We'll also share case studies from Fragrance.net and ShoppersChoice, direct response focused advertisers who have found success with Google TV Ads.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009
10:00am PST / 1:00pm EST
RSVP now to secure your spot.

Posted by Anna Khesed, Google TV Ads

Last month, we posted about how online retailer ShoppersChoice.com was able to reach new customers using Google TV Ads. Golden Gateway Financial, an online provider of reverse mortgages, also wanted to drive more customers to their website through television advertising. Their challenge, however, was to make sure that their campaigns reached audiences in the right demographics, because their products are specifically designed for seniors. They chose Google TV Ads to get started.

"With Google TV Ads we were able to review recommended programs, such as game shows, that appeal to our target demographic," Bob explains. "As a result, we were able to be more efficient with our media spend and increase the average age of visitors to our site [from 62 years] to 70 years, which is just where we want it to be." By using the unique targeting tools offered by Google TV Ads, Bob was able to not only drive more traffic to his website, but also increase the percentage of qualified traffic.

Following the TV Ads campaigns, direct traffic to the Golden Gateway Financial website increased from 15 percent to 70 percent, and those visitors stayed on the website longer and made more use of the site’s tools. “Google TV Ads has tools that are easy to understand and use,” says Bob. “Any small business that wants to grow its customer base through scalable efforts should check out Google TV Ads."

Click here to learn more about Golden Gateway Financial's success with Google TV Ads.

Posted by Kate Pacher for Google TV Ads