Google Nielsen TV Ads STILL Blurry: NOT AdWords for Television
I underscored Friday that Google’s mulit-billion dollar online AdWords machine is NOT inherently transferable to all media platforms, analyzing Google’s failure to sell radio advertising profitably. I also predicted that Google would pin its offline advertising hopes on television.
Google has confirmed my hypotheses today, in announcing its deal with Nielsen Company to add a “layer” of demographic data to set-top box activity tracked by Google: In heralding how a Nielsen product “improves Google’s measurement capabilities,” CEO Eric Schmidt acknowledges Google TV ads are NOT Google AdWords.
What’s more though, despite the new “enhanced by Nielsen” twist, Google TV ads remain a poor, distant cousin of their rich AdWords family.
Contrary to Google’s PR spin, and popular perception, an overlay of Nielsen data will not yield a seemingly magic “maximization of advertiser return” from Google TV ads.
The data that Nielsen will be giving Google is “representative television ratings panels.” In other words, extrapolations about national viewing habits created by using self-reported consumer usage information from a small sample of U.S. homes, out of the tens of millions of television viewing households.
Google is well aware of the persistent short-comings of its TV ads product. Mike Steib, product manager:
We want to help make TV advertising more effective and more relevant for advertisers…(BUT) When you talk about AdWords, there’s a person sitting there with a mouse and a computer that can go right to a Web site and give youi instant accountability. That doesn’t exist in television.
Nevertheless, the Google worldwide advertising domination fantasy is hard to repress: Google “expects” its TV ads to eventually boast the same type of “immediacy” as the Internet “backchannel.”
The Google offline advertising diversification track record does not support such a rosy forecast, however.
Unfortunately for Google, a Googley long two years out of the Google-DMarc Broadcasting gate, Google has NOT succeeded in bringing its touted AdWords ”accountability” to “old-school” radio advertising. SEE: Radio Ads Stall: Google Pins Offline Advertising Hopes On TV
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