TV and Google

In my previous post on Google’s entry into Radio and Newspaper advertising, I speculated about Google and TV.

Well, I was a little slow on the trigger. A Wall St. Journal article (reg) from this weekend discusses a trial that Google is performing with TV ads. Props to Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped for the insight and the image.

In it, WSJ reports:

Google has begun a test run serving up TV commercials to cable subscribers in Concord, Calif., people familiar with the matter say. The pilot project to bring its approach to cable boxes represents a foray into the $54 billion U.S. market for TV advertising — much bigger game than Google’s online turf.

Google since last year has been steering TV commercials to subscribers of cable provider Astound Broadband, a unit of WaveDivision Holdings LLC, according to four people familiar with the matter. When Astound’s customers watch TV, some commercials spots they see have been sold to advertisers by Google and delivered to the cable company so they appear in the normal breaks in programming as other ads do.

While the effort is in its early stages, it underscores how Google could bring changes to how TV commercials are sold and delivered to viewers. Other Internet companies are also pursuing an entree into TV advertising, and any major Google success could eventually challenge the traditional TV and advertising powers.

If the system is successful, Google could eventually try to establish itself as a middleman for purchasing TV spots, furthering its stated goal of offering advertisers one-stop-shopping across virtually all media. There is no assurance, though, that Google can repeat its success in online-search advertising — a field in which it had little serious competition — in the crowded, highly competitive arena of conventional media.

So What? What’s next…selling advertising space on the back of UFC fighters?

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