Reports are buzzing in the industry that Google is experiment with advertising and measuring Google TV Ads on the Dish satellite network just got a lot more interesting.
Just about two years ago, an esteemed Google paper described a way to link a computer with a television to collect real-time data about viewer actions. And just a month ago, Google incorporated the ability to buy TV ads into AdWords. Now, Google is happy to let people find out for themselves, by introducing functionality within the free Google Analytics service which allows users to track the progress of their TV campaigns.
According to the official Google Analytics blog, the service lets users to send their TV ad to a list of concerned channels, associated with Google, across the entirety of the US. The system then tracks the impressions delivered compared to the number of times the ad plays whilst the advertising spot is running. The service then compares the findings to timescales whilst providing information about the cost of the campaign.
This is very basic and imperfect, the significances of the technology Google was working on could spell trouble for Nielsen Media Research, the incumbent, go-to agency providing the data upon which TV ad prices have been based for half a century, but at the same time it also hints at the future of how advertising will be measured: all in the same place.
The system can be customized by geography, so if an ad is only running in one city then Google will provide information on the number of new clicks that come from people in that city.
“One of the common complains with TV and all advertising is that it is difficult to track success, and when you do get any sort of tracking information, it takes so long to receive that it is difficult to act quickly on,” Google Analytics group manager Brett Crosby says. But the Google TV analytics data “is updated throughout the day, so it allows people to make very quick decisions about what is working and what is not”.
With this new element advertisers’ utilizing Google TV Ads can measure impressions delivered, the number of ad plays, the cost, and CPM. Nielsen, of course, has made its own roads into the online measurement roads and has been proactive about creating new, more dynamic ways to measure audiences beyond demographics and audience size.
Google says that audio campaigns and TV campaigns are especially useful for users taking advantage of the offline advertising options within Google Adwords, although claims about the campaigns being extremely track-able leave something to be desired.
While the two are not always directly correlated, if the point of the TV ads is to drive Website traffic, at least advertisers can now eyeball whether any corresponding spikes occur after they run their TV ads.
Though, Google can only place TV ads on Dish boxes at this point, so its reach is limited. But within that sandbox, Google is showing the way that advertising ought to be measured.
However, it is not all that inferior — as this new functionality does go some way to being able to incorporate online and offline activities. It also promises that Google will cover costs of up to $2000 for creating a TV ad through Google’s Ad Creation Marketplace — although, again, it is doubtful that a company with the budget for TV advertising would be concerned with that amount of money.