Mountain View, California-based Google has signed an agreement with the Hallmark Channel that will allow  advertisers to buy commercial time on the Hallmark Movie Channel and Hallmark Channel through the Internet giant's fledgling Google TV Ads program, the two companies announced Wednesday. Financial terms between Google and the Hallmark Channel, a property of Studio City, California-based cable television network Crown Media Holdings Inc., were not disclosed. Google Adds Family-Friendly Demographic To TV Ad Auction Options The agreement called for Google to begin offering its TV Ads users access to Hallmark Channel programming, which the firms said has been among the top ten prime time channels over the past year, starting early in 2009. Google's 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 which was first launched in May. John Saroff, Google TV Ads manager of strategic partner development, said the Hallmark agreement would add an important audience to users of the Google television advertising service. "Hallmark Channel’s strong family-friendly brand and programming attracts an important viewer demographic that Google TV Ads’ advertisers can now access," Saroff said Wednesday in a joint statement announcing the agreement with the Hallmark Channel. Latest Expansion Of Google TV Ads Program "Combined with our platform’s measurement technology, this collaboration signifies an important step towards making television advertising more accountable for advertisers and more relevant for viewers," Saroff added. Google TV Ads 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 the case of the TV Ads program. For more than a year Google has sold a few minutes worth of local ads each hour on satellite TV giant EchoStars' DISH Network through the Google TV Ads auction-based system, which determines with to-the-second accuracy which ads are being seen and which are being skipped over, 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. Google Signs Television Advertising Deal With Hallmark Channel Wednesday's agreement, which Google said would "offer advertisers access to high-quality family-friendly programming through the Google TV Ads program," follows a similar partnership with several NBC Universal cable television networks announced in September, including CNBC, MSNBC and the SciFi Channel. The move was Google's latest push in an attempt do what it can to dominate television advertising similar to the way it has with online ads. Related Links :
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