Slashdot Mirror
Google Targets TV Advertising
mytrip writes to tell us that Google may have television advertising in the cross-hairs. CEO Eric Schmidt recently stated that viewers shouldn't have to stand for tv commercials that are a "waste of your time" and says Google is planning to deliver "targeted measurable television ads." I just hope I can still skip them with my TiVO in a couple years.
Google is so ubiquitous it seems going to TV advertising is going backward.
I know I've heard of those somewhere. I'll have to Google it and find out what it is.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Whenever I'm skipping through ads, I always rewind if I catch a Geico ad, or an Apple ad. These ads are often more entertaining than whatever I'm watching, and I hope that google helps advertisers to create content, rather than the awful propaganda that most ads are today.
Of course, I find myself scared that, while I've never purchased car insurance myself, the first place I will look will be Geico when I turn 25 - not because I have any reason to believe they are actually a better company, but their ads have caused me to think very highly of them on a subjective level. Even knowing this, I cannot undo this manipulation.
If this means I don't have to see any more feminine hygene product ads, go Google, go!
The overall concept is great. If commercials were 'targetted' to the particular viewer, they would be more effective and hence could either raise more revenue for television networks or allow for shorter commercial breaks.
The catch is this : I don't see what role google can have in this. They might be able to develop the technology for delivering the video cheaply and reliably using google OS and commodity PC hardware, like the rest of their systems work. This would make the back end at the cable and telecom tv providers cheaper. They could also develop the mechanism for choosing commercials ('searches' based on a users demographics) and evaluating success.
However, the profit is still in owning the pipes. How can google make money when the ownership of the network is in the hands of other : the telephone and cable companies.
In the cross-hairs? Why? Do they want to kill tv advertising? I suppose it's a big competitor for advertising bucks,but that's just overkill...
If Google can reverse the trend on some channels to move towards LARGE popups that move around and make noise on the bottom have of the screen DURING the actual show, completely ruining and interrupting it, than GREAT! Go for it!. I really hate trying to read something on the screen like a subtitle or place&time text only to have a big race car drive across it, obscuring my view and making loud tire screeching noises over a quiet/dark/moody intro scene to some show.
Quiet, text-only, to-the-point, factual advertisement is a lot more tolerable.
Morphing Software
People watch television to be entertained.
Therefore, when ads are entertaining, people watch them, and are less likely to ignore it by whatever means is convenient, be it by flipping channels, pressing mute, fast forwarding if it's prerecorded, etc...
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
viewers shouldn't have to stand for tv commercials that are a "waste of your time"
<vent>
For example, all automobile ads. Huge waste of money and my time. They show the cars out in the wild instead of sitting in traffic like most of us - they highlight features that only car-guys know what the heck it means (er, dodge hemisphere?), and the local dealer ads are headlined by guys/girls that have no shame and sound like idiots. I'm hard pressed to think of any car commercial that even has an entertainment value.
I think what really irritates me is that every 6-10 years when I buy a new car I know that a significant part of the cost is those stupid commercials.
</vent>
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
When I watch car shows, I see ads for cars and other car shows. When I watch Law and Order I see ads for Preparation H. When I watch Matlock, I see ads for adult diapers.
I want to like Google, and I do love most of their products, but the power and reaches of their information gathering and processing does have me a little concerned. Not to mention their infinite data retention policies. I don't think Google would necessarily do anything "bad" with that data, but that's not the point. All it takes is one incident to affect potentially millions of people.
You would need ALL ads to be entertaining for that to work. If the program you were watching switched to ads and they were entertaining, you wouldn't think of switching, but then if one lame ad came on, you'd think "wtf, why am I watching this?" and flip the channel. So, one guy will have ruined it for the rest of them (the ads after that one might have been great too).
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Having quite a bit of marketing background, I can assure you that it's completely intentional when an ad isn't like the Geico or Apple ads you mention. The main problem with such ads is that they don't explicitly show the product enough. They work fine for an insurance ad, as insurance really isn't a tangible thing (like a bottle of beer or a particular restaurant are). When it comes to something like insurance, you're trying to get the viewer to remember the name or the logo. It's rare that one can successfully associate something memorable with the name of a firm, as in the case of a gecko with the name "Geico".
Most ads are there to appeal to the ignorant, unwashed masses. And what often works best is to show them your product over and over and over and over and over and over. Like in Gatorade commercials, which are often just a montage of many clips of sweathy athletes drinking Gatorade. The same goes for shampoo. That way the consumer will remember the appearance of the item the next time they're in a store that sells it.
Cringely has been predicting this for quite a while now.
I can see this being both good and bad - we'll only get ads served to us based on subjects that we are interested in, but on the other hand we'll only get ads served to us based on subjects that we are interested in. The marketing people will be able to play on peoples insecurities a lot more efficiently.
I can also see embarassing times ahead for people who look up a lot of porn too...
Pah! Any true geek would know that TV ITSELF is a waste of our time :)
Finally, years of logging into Google and training my profile to search for porn will pay!!!
I wan't that NOW... NOW!!!! I say!!!!!
This would be a clever bit of insight on ZDnet's part if it hadn't been exhaustively explored by Robert Cringely seven months ago.
Basically, by buying up bandwidth and data center capabilities everywhere, google could insert context-driven advertising into any video stream on its way to the consumer, and do it far more efficiently and effectively than the networks are capable of.
Imagine watching Seinfeld and Jerry pulls a Coke from his refrigerator. Only, in some households he might be seen pulling a Pepsi. Developing the technology to dynamically insert products into the programming is the next logical step in advertising. We see it already, statically, with companies paying gobs of money for product insertion. Imagine instead shooting movies and programming with "generic" green-board like products, and then replacing them with images of the desired product, on a case-by-case basis. You already see some of this in baseball games. There is an ad billboard behind home plate in Fenway park. Nominally it is "green", but it gets replaced in the video stream (at the broadcaster end) with ads. It's not a huge step to move this insertion down to the DVR/cable box. This is where companies like TIVO have the inside track. Their boxes could do the insertion, under command from 'central control'. And they already know our viewing habits (not just what we watch, but when we watch it, and for how long), and our "clicking" habits.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I guess you're just not one of the typical 18-35 year old males who lives on top of a mountain cliff and parachutes down to his sweet Hemi and drives to work on a magical mountain road that appears out of nowhere while navigating hairpin S-turns in the mountains, and then makes it into the city where every other vehicle turns to dust and the buildings all come crumbling down into the country mountain road. I bet you don't even park your vehicle in the path of high tide at the rocky beach so it can get thrown around without taking any damage. You, sir, are a coward.
But seriously, what is it with car commercials and mountains? There also seems to be a lot of time spent in dry lake beds in the desert. What the fuck?
Is it just me or is Google the next MS? It seems instead of sitting in their own little pond (Online technology) they're slowing worming their way into everything else. Maybe it is just me.. but I sure as hell don't like it and "do no evil" does not imply the next guy along the line doesn't want to be evil.
I like muppets.
Its all a bunch of tubes i tell you.
Disclaimer: I created WideSAN
I've been working on a similar idea, except that the video is delivered over the Internet. With the WideSAN system, I can already deliver video with individually customized advertising inserted effortlessly by the server. Either as a standard AVI or in browser flash video. When delivering as flash video, tracking actual commercial views is possible. The problem has been getting licensed content to distribute.
It's certainly a very good idea if they can pull it off well. Say i'm watching The Simpsons or something with dinner - 5 tech adverts (say IBM, Dell, Intel, 1&1 and Microsoft) would be a hell of a lot more useful to me and likely most /.'ers than 5 generic adverts (Tampons, toilet paper, Audi, Budweiser, M&S).
My only real concern is whether they'll be implemented in a Tivo-like manner - where if i watch one episode of Will & Grace, it assumes i'm gay and records Queer eye for the Straight Guy for me.
"No, no, no, don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to."
Because most guys want to be able to do that, though we never will. It's a good reason to learn to fly. So you can go balls out and see just how hard you can turn, without Barney and his gun.
I don't think anyone would remember, let alone know about, this company.
AdExact was a small company located in Waterloo, Ontario, and was founded by Stephen Basco (of the PixStream fortune). The company had a product that was similar to what google is starting to talk about: targeted TV advertising.
The company eventually ran out of money and had to close down the shop.
I wonder what would have happened if they had managed to stay afloat for a few years? I also wonder what did happen to all that technology and know-how?
Esta es una firma en Espanol.
Almost the only time advertisements influence me are when they convince me NOT to buy from a company. If an ad is offensively loud, shrill, intrusive, or stupid, I make a note of that company. For example, when Quizno's decided that their product was best represented by a retarded mutant singing rodent, which carried the implication that you're eating... retarded mutant mice... I stopped eating there until about half a year after the last time I saw one.
Even a funny, clever ad will not make me buy something I don't want or need.
About the best an advertiser can hope for from me is to not offend me too much. It's very rare that an ad informs me of something I'm not already aware of. The only exceptions are Google's text ads, which I only see when I'm specifically looking to buy, and occasionally trailers for movies (and yet, I rarely go to see movies anymore, because of the 20 minutes of ads before the film, the shrieking babies, etc.) As far as TV goes, movie trailers make sense, but I don't see the purpose of most others. Is there anybody out there who hasn't made up their mind on Coke vs. Pepsi? Am I that unique in only reacting negatively to ads? Is the average consumer really that stupid? Oh... back to that again. Never mind.
This is interesting, Google criticizing tv advertisers. Web advertising is how they have made all their money and I am sure people do not like google web ads. http://www.adbloggers.com/
So of course I space on the name. Must... have... coffee.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
I'll be watching a "Lost in Space" rerun and I'll see a Google "targetted" commercial saying "Lost? Need directions? Try MapQuest.com! Ads by Goooooooogle."
Seriously, at least with the text ads you don't notice how absurd they are sometimes, but with TV ads people will just shake their heads at Google.
-William Brendel
Imagine watching Seinfeld and Jerry pulls a Coke from his refrigerator. Only, in some households he might be seen pulling a Pepsi. Developing the technology to dynamically insert products into the programming is the next logical step in advertising. We see it already, statically, with companies paying gobs of money for product insertion. Imagine instead shooting movies and programming with "generic" green-board like products, and then replacing them with images of the desired product, on a case-by-case basis. You already see some of this in baseball games. There is an ad billboard behind home plate in Fenway park. Nominally it is "green", but it gets replaced in the video stream (at the broadcaster end) with ads. It's not a huge step to move this insertion down to the DVR/cable box. This is where companies like TIVO have the inside track. Their boxes could do the insertion, under command from 'central control'. And they already know our viewing habits (not just what we watch, but when we watch it, and for how long), and our "clicking" habits...postownage
What I was reminded of was the Enron fiasco... They wanted to make a market for "bandwidth" that could be "traded". How they were going to "trade" broadband, though didn't make any sense.
It looks like Google is chasing the stock price just like Enron was, as TV is structured to deliver bandwidth en-mass, not targeted. They'd have to target "by station", and that's already well-targetted by corporations already by looking at basic demographics when they purchase timeslots.
Unless of course this is tv targetting by using independent broadband connections, with a hybrid multicast network topology, in which case, this is no big deal.
I had mod points the other day. I wish I still had them. You would have got some. This is bang on. Not only are they all like that, but they are identical all over the world. I mean, here in Britain it is unlikely that I will be rolling across the prairies or the Rockies or sliding around some Italian coastline in my new car. Why can't ad agencies think of some new ideas for generic car ads?
Some posters are groping towards what I think this is, in fact, all about. Television is currently a mass medium. It's mainly used to pump out lowest common denominator ads for LCD products. At the other end of the scale you have the hugely up-market direct mail companies that will, say, identify all the male, 30-45 bankers who just got really big annual bonuses in your catchment area, and send them your beautifully printed coffee table hardback of Ferrari pictures along with the offer of a test drive. It all derives from Lord Lever's (think Unilever)dictum "Half of what I spend on advertising is wasted, but I don't know which half." In fact, a 50% failure rate would be incredibly good in mass marketing. Google wants to commoditise targeted marketing wherever it happens, and to make targetable the marketing that is currently not targetable.
The thing is, at what point does this tip up into evil? I think there is a fairly fine line between sending me unsolicited information about something which profiling says I will be interested in, and psychological manipulation. Even paid for information - say motoring magazines - in which one would hope to find a measure of objectivity, in practice seem to say anything that will keep the advertisers happy. I am beginning to think that the downside to the Internet and mass media is that while, in theory more information is available about everything, in practice it is harder and harder to find objective information. The signal to noise ratio is actually growing smaller.
I'm particularly conscious of this because I have been trying to do something of an engineering nature recently. I won't bore you with the details, but as I have done my research I have gradually discovered that all the most readily available sources of information are, basically, lying for commercial reasons. In the end I got down to two sources of reasonably objective information.(I was eventually able to verify this by applying the actual engineering formulae to what they told me, which was how I know.) Neither publishes information (other than a contact address) on the net.
I can see that very soon we are going to need a subnet - some way of basing a network on socially arranged groups of trusted people - to provide reliable information about things. We used to have one (it was called universities) but they seem now to be overly subject to commercial forces.
Pining for the fjords
So Eric Schmidt is going to "fucking kill" tv advertising?
You have 6-10 years to save up for a new engine. Don't buy a new car! Do the maintenance as required, then put in a new engine, possibly a rebuilt transaxle or transmission, etc, whatever you need. You'll come out loads cheaper that way (in most instances, not all of course, YMMV) if you really are buying brand new and you haven't totally beat the old ride to death in the meanwhile.
With that said, hemi refers to the shape of the combustion chamber, hemispherical.
Put your search terms directly into the search box! Put your search terms directly into the search box! Put your search terms directly into the search box!
People still watch television? I shut off the cable a couple years ago and I've never looked back. What I want to watch, I download-for free, and without ANY commercials.
You mean an ad where you are stuck in stinky rush hour traffic and the AC goes on the fritz so you roll the window down, except it's electric so you can't because it's broken? Then the one chance a year you get to wind 'er out, the bigbro camera catches you and you get a ticket?
;)
That ad? Ya, I'd like to see it too. I also think they should make all the "closed track, professional driver" scenes illegal to use with advertising street cars. They should just stick to leggy girls in miniskirts getting in and out of the car and be done with it
Remember the days when ads used to mention their "America Online keywords"? Now a Pontiac commercial is telling the audience to "google Pontiac".
Google would be doing the latter: helping advertisers choose the best time to air their commercial.
Google's forte is not delivering broadcast-quality video, and it's definitely not making commercials. Google is best at sifting through content and demographics and effectively targeting ads. So that will probably be their only role in TV advertising.
It has taken to the middle of this thread before someone started talking about the most interesting aspect of this topic and it's rated only a 1 so far. Give the guy some points already.
The crux of the whole thing is linking up the cable customer's TV and internet behavior. The cable company and networks don't need Google to match shows with appropriate ads; that's been done for the whole history of TV. Nor do they need Google to match viewing habits over time with ad targeting; cable companies can do that without another party in the chain.
But to go beyond this, we're talking about matching up the web (and other?) internet behavior with the TV viewing.
In the least disturbing variation it would be only Google cookie + TV logs = targeted ads on TV. But even this involves the cable company keeping track of the combination of your current IP and your TV viewing, and expoiting it.
At the extreme, imagine your TV ads being real-time tailored to what you're currently looking at online, and your internet provider continually feeding your profile plus IP combination to Google so it can serve internet ads to pages served from *your* web clicks in particular. Maybe they'll tailor search results as well as ads. Maybe linking DSL into the picture as well. So even if you refuse the Google cookie, you get tracked. Maybe someday, tailoring the content on web pages by insertions and deletions on their way to you.
All this is too Orwellian for me. I want to opt out of all the monitoring as far as possible and prevent any connection between my activity patterns in different spheres.
USA and SciFi seem to be worst about those stupid pop-ups. The really amusing ones are when they pop up to advertise the show you are already watching...I guess they are geared toward those with short term memory loss.
It could be worse...
:( You wouldn't think they'd want to turn people's stomachs when advertising food...
I know I'm hearing it wrong, but I can't help but associate Snickers with "happy penis sores" thanks to that insipid song
Or what if they let Carrot Top make more ads? *shudder* I will *never* use a 10-10-whatever or any of those other screwball phone services (text "joke" to 1-800-YOU-LOSER for spams that cost you $1 each!) thanks to obnoxious ads like those.
Except you're years behind.
The baseball think is perhaps as much as 10 years old now.
And the replacement of ads in movies already started. I think it was Turner who was holding up movie companies for extra dough to not replace their ads with other ads when they showed the movies on TV. I remember seeing a movie on TV with a scene in Times Square where they had replaced one ad with another.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Most ads are uninteresting or, at best, interesting the first time I see them then they get boring fast.
One of the few advantages to "individually targeted" ads is the ads can be done in series: You only see a given ad once, and you see all the ads in a sequence, in order. Granted, this has some Orwellian "all your viewing habits are belong to us" aspects to it but there is that one positive aspect, less boredom.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's the question of our time.
Does the NSA scheme cross the line? Does P2P? Porn? Apparently the release of AOL's search information crossed the line.. how about retina-scanning talking billboards?
Technology and transparency will need to solve the problem of how to protect people from 'evil', including failsafe identity protection.
In my imagination security in the future is not a firewall, but a black box from within which the user can peer at the world through a hole. No information escapes from the box but a clickstream, signifying selections.
Yet it takes little to identify Thelma Arnold (identified by her search record on AOL), so the avatar that Thelma inhabits in cyberspace, that outline of her that her clickstream paints, will need to be Not_Thelma. And transparency is the only way that Thelma can trust the net, transparency so that google, car manufacturers, politicians, the MPAA, and children too can trust each other.
Or trust their neighbors. We can't stone John M. Karr just yet, but his case demonstrates the need to be able to identify and thwart evil. The NYT has a chilling article on the sophisticated underground network of pedophiles that has been empowered by the net http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/technology/21ped o.html.
I don't know about a subnet, but I like to think that there is an engineering solution here, a protocol or GNU license that can keep the internet open, free, and safe.
Berkeley Software... Groundhog?
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
For a couple of years now, television advertising has seemed, to me, as something that floats along on top of a misguided platform. This is not an attack against television itself, mind, but rather one leveled against the way in which we go about "thinking about" and "viewing" television itself. So my reaction to this news is as follows: is this a good start? Sure. However, it is doomed to ultimately fail (defined by lack of adaquate scoping, which leads to a lack of "stickiness" and inability to plant products squarely on the tip of the tongue of consumers) unless we re-examine the infrastructure of television itself.
(Yes, I'm aware that this is cagey - the full layout is something I've been tossing around in my mind for a couple of years and will hopefully submit in full before the new year.)
It was just a matter of time I suppose.
Once that money really sinks in, things go straight to hell for the average person who now is bombarded with their marketing hype.
Arguments over California Kings in their pimped out 767. C&D letters from their lawyers to journalists to stop using the term "google." Now here come the ads..... How soon until the "Google Rose Bowl" game is aired (which is played in Google Staduim)?"
Oh well, business as usual.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=194567&cid=159 44731 Nice copy and paste troll.
If I'm watching a show, that's what I'm doing, and that's the only thing I want to be doing. I don't want compelling commercials, because it will break my train of thought in the middle of watching my show.
So if the advertisers succeed in what they are trying for (i.e., getting me to stop watching the show to buy something), I'll just have to stop watching shows.
I know content producers have to make money somehow, so charge me money already. (Oh wait, you already do...who gets their content for free over the air anymore?) If there were a $5/month option to remove all commercials from all DirecTV channels, I'd pay it. What is the advertising revenue on those channels divided by the subscribers, anyway? If networks (including cable networks) gave up their advertising revenue and charged subscribers, how much would it come to a month? Someone must know. I know I sure don't spend $5 on products advertised that I'm not going to spend on them anyway.
I have money, I don't have unlimited attention.
Relevant aside: The state fair is in town. On Tuesdays, kids get in free and rides are a dollar, so my father is taking my niece on Tuesday. You save a couple of dollars, and have to share the park with a teeming mass of screaming kids. I'd much rather go on a day where they charge twenty dollars to get in---imagine how nice and quiet it would be!