Google TV Ads Isn't Going Away Any Time Soon

With all due respect, I beg to differ with my BNET Media co-conspirator, David Weir, on whether Google TV Ads will be around for awhile. It will be. It’s easy to see why most pundits would believe that Google TV Ads would follow in the footsteps of Google’s failed attempts at bringing its automated, auction-based model to print and radio. But Google TV Ads is different, because it is looking to meet a  need that the industry it’s targeting very much needs to fill.

For the most part, all Google’s print and radio ad products did was fulfill Google’s need to see how far it could take its model, and in those cases, of course, it wasn’t very far. Google Print Ads was serving a shrinking market, and while incremental revenue would have been wonderful to deliver to the newspaper business, there’s obviously less demand for a product that less people are reading (at least reading on paper).

As for Google Audio Ads, the radio industry didn’t seem to be clamoring for incremental revenue brought to it by Silicon Valley’s 800-lb. gorilla, either. I can remember getting on the phone with a major radio buyer a few years ago while reporting a feature about Google to ask her what she thought of Google entering her business. In between bites of what seemed to be a fairly major sandwich, she said that all the company was doing was selling remnant inventory that no one wanted, and almost laughed me off the phone.

So why is Google TV Ads different? Because the TV market, much more than radio, and certainly much more than print at this point, is quickly developing a long-tail that needs to be monetized, and existing models can’t handle it. The current model for buying TV is known more for handshake deals and squishy metrics than solid measurement and automated processing, let alone an auction model. Major TV companies  have to play in the long tail, because viewers increasingly inhabit it. Just look at network TV’s declining share of audience and cable’s increasing share if you’re not convinced, or at the increased splintering of even cable networks into ever finer slivers of consumer interest. For major TV companies, it’s imperative to monetize this content.

Google TV Ads is also looking to fulfill another need that advertisers are crying out for: better measurement of television, from the programming to the ads themselves. Currently, Google TV Ads is culling data from millions of set-top boxes, giving advertisers and TV media a second-by-second accounting of what viewers are watching. Advertisers crave better measurement. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be constantly pushing Nielsen, the granddaddy of TV measurement, to update its ratings system to move way beyond the 10,000-or-so homes that make up its sample, or only ratings viewership of the programming as opposed to the ads.

It’s also extremely telling that Google has plenty of competitors in trying to change the model of the TV ad marketplace. This was certainly not the case with its forays into print and radio advertising. The major cable operators are backing Canoe Ventures, which seeks to do much the same thing as Google TV Ads. SpotRunner, which has backing from some of the major ad agency holding companies, and Microsoft’s Navic Networks are also in the mix. In terms of representing inventory, Google has a ways to go; on the other hand, it got NBC Universal in the fold in September.

I would never be so foolish as to predict a winner here. But, if nothing else, Google will stay in this game simply because it won’t want to back out of this competition, which appears to be just heating up. If I’m wrong, the drinks are on me.