Will Google Change TV Advertising?

[jmiller]

Google is “mulling” over brokering television advertisements, according to the New York Post. Though ad execs downplay Google’s ability to effectively enter this market, it may be that they are victims to an old world paradigm—discussing carburetors when Google is thinking fuel injection.


From the Post article:

“The television networks, along with the media firms that buy ad time and space on behalf of advertisers, also vehemently reject the notion that buying a TV spot can be reduced to a computer-run auction.”

Author Holly M. Sanders goes on to describe the opinion of traditional advertisers that the best Google could accomplish at first would be placing ads on low-rent niche cable networks—and perhaps local TV spots.

This presents a much different viewpoint of the media industry’s reaction to the Internet as reported by Reuters today, penned by Adam Pasick:

“WPP Chief Executive Martin Sorrell warned on Thursday that many of the world's leading media companies are on the verge of panic amid the seismic shifts brought on by the Internet.”

But more telling is the quote from Sorrell taken from an Internet Advertising Bureau Conference:

"There are major changes and we don't understand the speed and scale at which they're taking place.”

This same week, we learn that Calif.-based SureWest Communications is beta testing fiber-to-the-premises high definition broadband television at a potential of 20 megabits per second (Mbps).

We also know that Google has registered some interesting domain names including:

googletelevision.net
googlehd.net
googlehdtv.net
googlehidef.com
googletv.com (through Data Docket Inc., who registered Google Earth before launch)

In September, Wired Magazine’s Josh McHugh wrote a telling piece about Yahoo! becoming “the Super Network,” or as some have called it, “the 5th Network, suggesting that Google’s strongest competitor is about to jump head first in television/video content.

It’s becoming clear that broadcast and cable networks are so 20th Century. And as such, the traditional players in television advertising will need to abandon the old world at some point and focus on the revolution. That Google is mulling a type of television ad brokering shouldn’t be all that surprising, but it should give media buyers something to think about.