Mountain View, California — Google Inc., has always attempted to deliver online ads differently depending on what you search for, has now expanded its horizon with newly announced alliance with dynamic TV ad platform Visible World, an addressable TV ad technology company.
The deal symbolizes another major step in the gradual development of the company’s television business, and could give advertisers that appreciate the measurability of digital advertising an incentive to use Google for TV.
“This is a big step for the industry,” said Mike Steib, director of Google TV Ads at Google. “Addressability has such powerful returns for advertisers. Targeted campaigns are so much more impactful than general campaigns.”
The Visible World relationship is the latest on the roster of partner deals Google has made as it ramps up its Google TV product. “To drive adoption as quickly as possible, we need to make sure the ecosystem is working together,” he said. “What advertisers care about is the ability to deliver media and message optimization across all media channels. That is what already happens in direct marketing or online advertising.”
Google, in the past has worked with Visible World for advertisers such as computer firm Lenovo. Now, all advertisers buying media through Google’s system can employ Visible World’s creative optimization capabilities. And they can decide which ads are working best in a campaign depending upon the performance of unique URLs, phone numbers, or calls to action.
Steib said the deal was prompted by a number of Google and Visible World clients asking the companies to work together.
New York-based Visible World, which enables companies deliver multiple TV ads for different audiences, has partnered with Google TV Ads to make that possible, Visible World announced in a release Tuesday.
Google TV Ads is a service that enables companies to pick out and buy ad time for multiple programs on multiple networks at once, based on their target audiences, and then monitor the response to the ads using data from set-top boxes.
Tara Walpert Levy, president of Visible World, said that allows businesses to be more targeted about where their ads run — the times, the geographic locations, the types of shows.
“When you have more media targeting available to you, you have the need for more message customization,” she said in an interview. “That is not something Google does. That is something we do.”
Visible World helps advertisers to develop multiple ads and offers, and target them at particular TV programs, cities, neighborhoods, or even groups of households, such as households that own cats, Walpert Levy said. She added that the data that allows for that kind of targeting is “anonymized” so the households cannot be identified.
“One of the barriers to greater acceptance is creating the number of messages required in a cost effective way,” Walpert Levy. Essentially, advertisers upload TV commercial assets and messages into the Visible World platform, which now works in conjunction with Google’s ad delivery system. Lenovo, for example, had about 50 different ad variations running through the Google network using Visible World’s system last year, according to Walpert Levy.
The deal will allow customers to access both companies’ services together. Visible World said more than 200 advertisers currently use its services.
The Google TV Ads platform has been promoted as a way for small to mid-sized companies and major advertisers to advertise their products and services on TV. Visible World enters existing advertising systems partners including Core Media and Broadway Systems and ad creation specialists such as Spotmixer and Spotzer. Network and cable partners which carry Google TV ads include Dish Network and several cable channels, including Bloomberg, CBS College Sports, Chiller, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen and SyFy.
Still, without the ability to target locally in Google’s cable-based network, it’s unclear whether the Visible World offering will help attract more small advertisers.
Visible World also has a system that allows companies to swap and edit the different ads or offers for each target audience on the fly.