GoogleTV: Connecting Television to Measurable Results

For many companies, especially small businesses, purchasing Television as part of a media buy is often out of the question due to budget constraints.  Additionally, if you promote your business nationally, you probably have a small likelihood of integrating TV into your media plan, because of both the cost and the competitive nature of the marketplace. Well, thanks to Google, there is a movement to democratize and make buying Television ad time smarter, quicker and easier.

You may have already heard of GoogleTV—it came out of “beta” last summer and has quietly been growing its network of Cable operators, channels, and ad agencies in its favor ever since. Here at EGC, we are particularly fond of GoogleTV, and expect that it will, over time, become a key element in all of our integrated media buys. 

Here’s how GoogleTV works:  when setting up a campaign, EGC defines your target customer, and using technology built into the GoogleTV system, finds the shows that are most effective in reaching your target.  Once we have determined the shows and networks that will best reach your target, the EGC media team puts together a schedule of specific dayparts and programming. All sounds pretty standard as it relates to buying TV ad time so far, right? Well, this is where Google changes the game. Once we’ve defined where you should run, EGC uploads your commercial to the GoogleTV system and determines how much you should spend on the buy.

Advertisers can spend as little or as much as they want… but ultimately, to get a decent rotation and run in high-quality shows, you have to pay a higher premium. Sound familiar? The whole concept, while revolutionary to TV ad sales, is old news to those of us at EGC who manage online marketing and Google Search campaigns. Like Search, the premise of GoogleTV is that we bid on inventory and the market determines the price for the placement. If the bid is accepted, your commercial runs. If it isn’t, it doesn’t.

Suddenly, because of Google, is TV as trackable and informed a medium as online? Sort of. While GoogleTV is a great opportunity, it does have its shortcomings. First—distribution is currently limited to only the DISH Network and certain Cable networks (expect this to change… Google is working to increase their reach constantly). Second—we can only buy GoogleTV nationally, so if you are a local or regional business, EGC can’t purchase just a DMA or local area for your buy as we can from a Cable provider (again… expect this to change).

While these shortcomings may be too much for some, GoogleTV is definitely an opportunity for many. At EGC we have seen great success using GoogleTV for our client, Brother International. One of the benefits of GoogleTV is similar to Search—EGC receives so much data on performance that we can alter campaigns mid-run, as often as necessary. Using the data at our disposal, EGC was able to optimize the Brother buy in real time to the point that we ensured delivery of a positive ROI. Costs per call were the lowest we have seen for any previous Brother Television campaign, and sales of the featured product increased during the campaign run.

GoogleTV is only a year old, so I’m not suggesting you ditch the tried and true methods of Television ad buying and jump on this boat.  Yet.  Just remember if your EGC media team suggests GoogleTV that when the little search engine known as “Google” launched, nobody ever thought it would amount to anything… Enough said.

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