Mountain View, California-based Internet giant Google has added a service for advertising on television to its  popular AdWords online ad management system, ending a private invitation-only test begun in June 2007 and releasing the program to all United States-based advertisers, the search leader announced Wednesday. Google AdWords team member Christian Yee called the company's television advertising program a "flexible, all-digital system for easily and efficiently buying more accountable and measurable TV advertising," writing in a statement announcing the Google TV Ads program posted Wednesday on the company's AdWords blog. National Television Ads Run Through Google The program allows advertisers to run campaigns using a Web-based interface to choose which markets, television networks and programs to target, and to automate and keep track of all  ads placed using the Google TV Ads system. "You can launch a national television ad campaign right from your existing AdWords account," Yee noted in the Wednesday announcement. The Google program can manage ads of 15, 30, 45 or 60 seconds in length, for most types of products and services aside from political election, fundraising or adult sexual content, according to the Google AdWords Web site. Google did not release details of the scope of the audience the program can target, however it is expected to include some 14 million subscribers of the EchoStar Communications DISH Network. In May 2007 Google began a partnership with the DISH Network to gather information from set-top boxes accessing 125 national satellite channels available through the EchoStar. In October 2007 Google's director for television ads Michael Steib commented about improving television's advertising system. "We want to bring all the advantages that we see in online advertising — like more accountability, a better sense of the audience, better tools to optimize a campaign — and bring them to television to make TV advertising more effective," Steib told the New York Times, and the Google TV Ads program, which is based on an auction model, appears to represent the company's effort to bring these advantages to its AdWords customers. Google Releases Television Advertising Service The program uses an auction system similar to Google's Web advertising system that was largely responsible  for making the company the online advertising leader it has become, with television advertisers setting an amount they are willing to pay using a system based on the cost per 1,000 impressions, or television views in this case. Advertisers pay once the ad has aired, and the Google TV Ads program can suggest suitable programs for each ad, "based on matches with the title, program description, cast, genre, episode information and networks," according to Yee, who also noted AdWords TV customers can receive free custom ad campaign proposals. Google maintains a list of professionals able to help should a customer not have a television spot ready to air with the new program, and launched a limited time offer in conjunction with Wednesday's release that will help cover the first $2,000 of production work done through its Ad Creation Marketplace, a service offering script writing, editing, production, and voice-over help. Google Faces Rivals Such as Spot Runner, Project Canoe Google TV Ads faces rivals including Spot Runner, which allows advertisers to buy cable and local television ads, and a similar program from six of the largest cable television operators in the U.S., Project Canoe. Among the companies invited to test the pilot Google TV Ads program were weight loss program Jenny Craig, Buy.com, Priceline.com and FragranceNet.com. Jason Apfel, who founded FragranceNet in 1995, had a positive experience testing the Google TV Ads program. "The key competitive advantage of Google TV Ads is the ability to access multiple networks, make quick changes to spend and settings, and purchase on a true CPM basis - we pay only for impressions we receive," Apfel noted in a testimonial on the Google TV Ads Web site. "Because of these benefits, we're definitely looking forward to using Google TV Ads this holiday season," added Apfel. Google said that it will be offering online help sessions, or so-called webinars, in the coming months to show how the new TV Ads program works, and has made several video tutorials available on its AdWords Web site. Expanding on Partnership With The Neilsen Company For the past year Google has been selling a few minutes worth of local ads each hour on satellite TV giant EchoStars' DISH Network through their Google TV Ads™ auction based system, which determines with to-the- second accuracy which ads are being seen and which are being skipped, and in October 2007 began a partnership with media firm The Neilsen Company to incorporate television ratings and demographic information into its Google TV Ads™ network for managing national advertising campaigns. Many television advertisers have lamented the lack of data available to them after rolling out an ad campaign. "When I’m buying for network or cable, I get an estimate of what the cost per million will be. Then the ad runs, and that’s it. I get very little data back," Buy.com's vice president for marketing Jeff Wisot told The New York Times. With the addition of Nielsen's demographic information, Google is able to provide advertisers detailed information about the performance of particular ads within 24 hours, all in an easy to use Web environment that is a part of Google's AdWords system. It remains to be seen how advertisers will take to Google's new TV Ads program, however the potential for meeting with some success appears high. Related Links:
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9:54 pm on May 1, 2008 (utc 0)