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Google to Transform Television Advertising?
Brad Zink writes "According to Robert X. Cringely, Google is poised to enter into the world of television advertising. This would usher in a new era for the venerable medium, creating a tidal wave of revenue for the networks, while solidifying Google's position in the advertising industry. Cringely develops this prediction based on his belief that Google is developing a network of data centers to be placed around the globe, which would be used to serve television commercials in addition to its current online content."
I was working on some scotch theory with a very good friend about 6 months ago -- we were both in a very short lived video production business ages ago. I had recently considered adapting Google to television in a very unique way and wanted his input.
My thought was to take television's closed captioning text and IMDB show data and run it through Google's "I'm feeling lucky" API in real time. Eventually you could have really cool "pop up" information program running that can give you pop up information correlated to what is happening on screen. Software running on a Media Center PC (or a Tivo?) could give you real time information on actors and what they're talking about. Imagine watching ER, wondering about a disease or illness they're talking about, and instantly having that information pop up without anything but a button click (if even that). Remember VH1's Pop Up Video?
As the conversation moved forward, we realized the real power of bringing Google to TV is advertising -- bringing ads to the web (more than just a GIF or SWF) and bringing web ads to the television -- contextual of course. Hours passed and the ideas that moved through the conversation seemed revolutionary (until we realized that Brin is a billionaire and we, well, aren't). Google certainly has the most powerful contextual algorithms in the market (although Yahoo is quickly catching up). Google's use of gmail and possibly AOL e-mails and IMs to aggregate even MORE user data (not just contextually but also within a physical region) will definitely give them more specific insight into a user's needs based on more than just what they browse.
The number one complaint I hear on why people use Tivo (or ThePirateBay as it seems to be lately) is that advertising sucks -- it is unimportant, too generalized and the same thing over and over. During our conversation half a year ago I made mention of how I'd love to see old commercials for current products -- the old Coke commercials are priceless (and comical) and there is NO reason why Google couldn't offer to bring back this and more. Instead of the same 40 ads in rotation, they have over 60 years or so of advertising they could bring back (some pre-TV movie theatre advertising) and stick in rotation, especially if the company is more logo-centric than actual product-minded.
I just signed on to Akimbo (need to set it up on my MCE box) and wonder how long it will be before these guys connect with Google. Tivo, Akimbo and MCE are programmable set top boxes just waiting to be utilized by Google. As even video game systems become more of a set-top programming station rather than a specific use peripheral, Google has an opportunity to really jump on everyone's hardware rather than design and sell their own. "Designed for Google!" could be the new sticker on every consumer device.
The conversation finished up (as far as I remember, I wish I recorded these nights of single malt drinking!) with us discussing things that Google might not even have put much weight in at the time -- SMS, VoIP, WAP searches and other data to be aggregated and utilized. If Google offers free VoIP, what prevents them from anonymously and generically aggregating your phone call keywords? If you're using Google SMS searches from your GPS-enabled phone, what prevents them from offering advertising to a local business (other than the one you're searching for). Taking all that information into their data centers and using their complex heuristic analysis gives them an awesome amount of information that advertisers could only have dreamed of 10 years ago. Being able to match price to need is also a big deal -- imagine what car dealers would offer Google for a local car buyer searching for a deal or how Google could knock around the realty market? Not exactly topical in terms of television advertising, maybe, but Google + Advertising can change how we define "on demand programming" nonetheless. Tomorrow's TV could just be today's BitTorrent with the Go
When it comes to google I find that advertising isn't a problem. Google aren't weren't "in your face intrusive" and I feel fine having them there, it's the ones that pop up, make loud noises or drain my CPU which are the ones I hate.
I think when it comes to advertising, Google can somehow pull it off.
".... knowing that Google will still be the only game in town for the crux of the whole thing: the ability to show every viewer the specific ads that companies will pay the most to show him at that specific moment. What Google wants to do with these trailers is SERVE EVERY TV COMMERCIAL ON THE PLANET because only they will be able to do it efficiently. Only they will have the database that converts those IP addresses into sales leads, only they will have the servers and disk space close enough to the viewers to feed the ads. Only Google will have the chops to run a constant, real-time auction for the next ad every consumer is about to see, and then serve that ad at the moment the program goes to commercial."
So you really want that Viagra/Valtrex/Cialis/Levitra ad to always be showing up when your new girlfriend is watching TV with you?
I would think not.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
This could be an interesting idea, but Google's advertising model doesn't translate so well to television. How would you go about compartmentalising viewers into groups, and serving the relevant ad? Sure, you could go on household viewing stats, but that might require extra hardware to get to; and I'm sure some people would object.
Also, it can't be as simple as the article suggests - when you have someone going to Google.com, you can be fairly sure there is one person (usually) behind the monitor. Many many more in front of the TV. How do you weight your targeting?
I just can't see how this would practically work.
Sure, it's just a "what if," but if Google hasn't thought of this already, they should. It's a nearly perfect extrapolation from AdSense: contextual advertising for television.
If they could also get in bed with the media metrics folks, like Nielsen, they'll be able to tie in the demographic information and, like Cringely supposes, only show Alzheimers drug ads to seniors and their children, and only show beer ads to people over 21.
If Google does go in this direction, I can only hope that ads will be rotated in the manner of AdWords ads. I.E: Only the ads that interest people will be shown, or shown more often. I love to watch well-done commercials, and most of them are so poorly scripted that they A) don't convince me to buy and B) are just plain boring.
I don't know that this is going to happen, or if it's even feasible, but it sure is fun to think about.
I, for one, welcome our new Monostad 7 ad-serving overlords.
Hot in the heels of Google's entrances into the markets of TV advertising, PC production, and other 'secret' markets, Minor news agencies are announcing Google's intention to begin international fruit sales. One excited googler said "This is complete rubbish, I wish people would stop all this wild speculation.", his denail further confirming our suspicions.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
The Big Thing for 2006 is TV on demand, downloaded via some p2p technology.
Take a look at the top downloads on a site like Piratebay and you'll see that they are all TV episodes.
What Google is probably lining up to do is to compete against Apple, who are moving into the same market.
Google are betting that they can deliver TV episodes for free, with advertising. Apple are betting they can sell TV episodes with no advertising. Microsoft are trying to make it all happen through the XBox.
This is why Google's been buying dark fibre. This is why Google is buying into AOL, for access to TW shows. This is what will drive the next generation of portable gadgets.
Yes, the Internet and P2P is finally going to transform TV into something that actually produces good entertainment, and will one day turn around and redefine the movie industry as well.
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This could be bad news for married people who are secretly searching the web for a "special friend". Opps!
This just in! 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.
When he's right, it's only because he makes so many stupid, hacky positions and predictions that by the law of averages he has to hit one once in awhile.
Not to say he's a bad source of information, mind you, just that he's a source of information no better than, say, a magic 8 ball.
Over the last few years I've been struck by Google's ability to compete in a very effective way. Generally they seem to eschew a fight with the main competitor and rather simply rewite the rules and assert their dominance in that field (think online ads). Advertising is one of those ivory tower industutries where small firms must 'play ball' in order to get any decent contracts (my brother was in advertising for a number of years). Google, it is speculated, will simply rewrite the notion of broadcast advertising and assert a stranglehold on the new style. An interesting gamebit, to be sure.
The big New York ad firms will be scrambling to figure out how to beat Google at this new game. No if Google opened Google Studios, where they could produce the content of the ads, they would be richer than God
It seems as though they are transforming slashvertising, at least.
If they could also get in bed with the media metrics folks, like Nielsen, they'll be able to tie in the demographic information
If Google went into this space, they would almost instantly put Neilsen out of business.
Neilsen familys need to volenterr, and be paid. Google can give *actual real* dmeographic infromatio, because they already know where you live (from the cable company), and what you are interested in (from Google searches), and who you talk to (from GTalk/GMail).
Neilsen can only dream of the kind of demographics Google could extrapolate. Google would mak ethe Neilsen ratings obsolete, because after all, it doesn't necessarily matter if a TV show is being viewed by a lot of people, what matters is if the ads being shown in it key into the demographic enough that the show is profitable. Google can *ensure* that, all Neilsen can do is make educated guesses based on the surveys it sends it families.
I have a friend who is developing a technology that would mix seamlessly with this Google idea, and I believe he is currently in talks with cable companies about it. The device he's engineered will actually map the picture coming accross the broadband cable to your television set, and with a joystick-like remote control you can navagate around the screen and click on products that you are interested in. Information, or links to information, about each product or person in a show would be served along the broadband stream making virtually everything you see in a show "clickable." It would allow you to say, get information about the gadget that is being used in CSI, or stats on your favorite sports player/team.
It seems that integration with Google would be invaluable for something like this, and it would really change the landscape of advertising content. We would begin to choose what ads we want to see based on our personal interest in a certain item. Since DVRs are striking a blow to the standard 30 second spot, and product placement is growing in leaps and bounds this really seems like the new stage for advertisement in general, but best of all it might allow us to finally have seamless programming.
Sorry I don't have a link to info about this device, he doesn't have a product site built up yet since it's still in development.
Disclaimer: I'm no Google fanboy (in fact, I can be downright wary about them at times), but this post has several problems and incorrect assumptions:
"Most people know how overrated google has become. Why then do we keep writting about only the good things?"
Maybe it's because (less a certain section of the Slashdot audience where it's trendy to bash Google), "most people" (you know, the 90% of people on the internet who barely know which way round a mouse goes) find Google works perfectly well for them. And from personal subjective experience, it's a lot better than the majority of other search engines out there, and vastly better than the state the search industry was in before Google came along.
And, to be fair, they are extremely innovative as a company - look at the sheer number of products launched (even if they are beta)... can you name many other companies who even beta-release quite such a number of products with quite such regularity? Google also have a good track record of entering a moribund field (search, webmail, etc) and kicking the already-entrenched players up the arse.
They've mastered the Richard Branson/Virgin technique of analyzing an industry, working out what's wrong with every offering out there, and offering something which fixes it. It's not always disruptive tech, but can sometimes merely be disruptive feature-offerings.
"I don't read Cringely very often, but I've never seen even him have anything really negative to say about google. What's up with this? Is it just because they put out some nifty tools that raise large amounts of privacy concerns? Is it because it was ONCE a killer search engine?"
Well, Cringely's a bit of a fanboy, but I've seen him post a few less-than-glowing things about Google before.
"Why aren't poor search results being reported? For example, in the city of Vallejo, CA we are the only facilities based DSL provider and we even own vallejodsl.com, but up until today (which is the first time I've done this search in 2 months) we weren't even on the first 5 pages."
So what? Did you ever think that the website of a single local DSL operator in rural america might not be especially interesting to an audience spread across the entire globe?
You also don't say what search terms you were chasing, which makes this entire statement non-operative in terms of judging Google's performance.
By giving this example you also raise the possibility of the usual scenario - someone who's pissed off with Google because they can't get good rankings for their own pet site, not because it's generally poor at search.
"I've been given huge amounts of excuses for why that could be, but when 80% of the results were blackhat SEO tactics that shoved us back I could care less about them."
Well, you very obviously haven't got good advice. Might I suggest you start by updating the site to XHTML 1.0 (ideally Strict, Transitional will do), and make sure the code validates . If you haven't done this you haven't even taken the first steps you should have taken.
You should also take a lot of that text on the site out of images and put it in lovely plain (but styled) HTML. Google can't index text in images - this is pretty much SEO Baby-Steps lesson #2.
"We are a well established company (15 years in business) and there should be no reason why we should have been so low on the results. We have plenty of backlinks but google only lists like 36 while others list as many 3000. We stood in that "state" for well over 2 years regardless of what we did on our end."
Yes, there is a good reason: your website is crap and hasn't been SEOed at all. Apologies for being harsh, but you need to realise there's a buttload of things you could (and should) be doing, rather than just sitting there blaming the seearch engines.
The age of your business is immaterial
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
In the last two years the Weather Channel has been making a big push in this direction. They have been a technological innovator in the cable world especially in the way they push the local forecast to every individual head end that carries TWC. Leveraging that technology they have begun regional targeting and weather specific targeting.
An example of this is a tire company. On any other network when they buy national time one commercial for one tire is aired. With regional targeting rain tires can been served to the northeast and good weather tires to the south - in the same :30 seconds two spots run simultaneously in different parts of the country. Take that a step further and you really begin to see the value in the premium price TWC gets for these spots.
TWC links it's ad serving to it's local forecasts at each head end. If it's raining in your county you'll see a rain tire commercial, while your buddy up north on another cable system where it's snowing will see a spot for snow tires. An hour later when the snow turns to rain he's see a spot for rain tires.
While conceptually the idea of Google leveraging these trailers is conceivable Cringely's prediction is flawed. Google will not be able to sell targeting to the networks. National network commercials are still carried over the air. Cable operators simply retransmit them. The minute or two of local time is sold by the local affiliate, also over the air and then retransmitted. Neither the nets nor the affiliates would let a cable operator insert commercials over the ones they've sold and no technology exists to legally insert them over the air interrupting the original signal. There may be some room in the cable only universe for cable MSO's to sell national advertisers more targeted spots in the 2 minutes an hour then get but the idea of Joe's Restaurant down the block spending money on production of a TV ad and then paying extra to target me seems a little far fetched.
I think the prediction in today's NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/06/technology/06onl ine.html makes more sense. Downloads an convergence of the TV and PC are where it's going to be at.
Or we could just wait and see what the announcement is. What is the point of specualting anyway besides driving traffic to /. everyday? :)
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