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Google Targets TV Advertising
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sun Aug 20, 2006 12:35 PM
from the welcome-to-the-googleverse dept.
from the welcome-to-the-googleverse dept.
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.
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TV? Television? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:TV? Television? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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It's the thing the Sci-Fi channel is on! And you call yourself a slashdotter...
I don't watch TV, other than down the pub for a footy match now and then (which will probably be considerably less frequent with the new EPL distribution of matches.) I do, however listen to old radio X-1 and Dimension-X plays on classic sci-fi from the 1940's and 50's. Follow this link. [archive.org]
I love Geico ads. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
It's so absorbant! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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As long as they are so absorbant!
Most people aren't as smart as you. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
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It's not repetition as you suggest, it's propoganda.
Re:Most people aren't as smart as you. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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While I shan't budge from USAA, I would like to beg them to collect all of their ads on a DVD, as I'd happily buy a copy.
The soap opera spoof: "I saved. I thought that meant something to you!" was also intense.
Re: (Score:2)
I can't really see how Google helping to create ad contect would equal the success of the Geico ads, but...
In any case, what you're suggesting is that Google be come an ad agency, and I somehow don't think the shareholders would go for that.
Then again, all they really have to do is create one killer ad that gets everyone talking and that could change people's minds.
Re:I love Geico ads. (Score:4, Insightful)
The point of my post is really that Google's ad targeting approach may lead to less ads that are better focussed, and have strong incentives to have higher qualtiy content.
Parent
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you aren't purchasing your own car insurance until you turn 25?
Well (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that for broadcast TV (in the US at least), you're not the customer, you're the product. Advertisers are the customers. Google can make money off TV advertising the same way they do everywhere else: by making ads more successful and therefore more profitable for advertisers. That lets networks charge more for advertising space and time, and Google takes a cut of that. The profit isn't in owning the pipes, it's in owning the eyeballs.
There's also the synergy angle, i.e. Google can tightly couple TV advertising with Web advertising. "Joe just saw an ad on TV for X and started Googling for information on it five minutes later, so let's show him ads for stores in the area which sell X." Going back to what I said before, with regards to Web advertising, Google pretty much owns all the eyeballs, so this has the potential to be really profitable for them.
Parent
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It sounds to me like Google is going to try to put their Database and Search technology to use in a similar capacity only with TV. Anyone who has digital cable and/or sattelite television programming in their home, or even TiVo for that matter, can hav
Mod parent upRe:Well (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Obligatory (Score:2, Funny)
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Because Google has your search results, whereas the best any TV network can find out is the shows you like to watch. The latter gives them a vague idea of your preferences when you sit back to watch things that are passively pushed at you, whereas the former reveals a lot about what you're actively looking for. Just think about the recent AOL search leak, which revealed more about the users than anyone thought (or feared) was possible.
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What utter bollocks. There will never be less commercials on tv. If people put up with 1/3 of every show being advertising now, they'll put up with it tomorrow. So what if google or anyone can better target their ads?
Suppose that ads are more effective so any one compa
Popups (Score:5, Interesting)
Quiet, text-only, to-the-point, factual advertisement is a lot more tolerable.
Re:Popups (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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I have a mental blacklist of companies who no matter how tempting the offer they will never ever get a sale from me again.
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I agree. Advertisements have gotten far too obtrusive. If you want to advertise something, put it in the breaks that are built into every show. Don't put something across the sides or bottom of the screen to distract me in the middle of the show. That's just going to make me want to find a copy of the show without the ads.
If people are pushed toward downloading ad-free copies of a show, then nobody watches the ads, the advertisers stop advertising, and the ad revenue for the cable co goes to crap. It'
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The companies that market to couch potatoes (e.g. the ones that treat TV, and want to treat the Internet, as a spam-delivery method) hate the notion. Anything that might distract their prey from its fascination with their bait provokes tactics that would make Ebling Mis proud. And the notion that they could be out-competed for eyeball-minutes by relevant and at least marginally interesting ads? It's a no-brainer: they'll bu
I have no problem watching ads that entertain (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
Well, actually... (Score:2)
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Yes... it would require that all ads be at LEAST as entertaining as the show it is interrupting.
A tremendously hard thing to do.
Probably as difficult as coming up with an idea for a hit TV series in the first place.
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Can anybody say "Dodge Hemi"??? (Score:5, Funny)
<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>
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So I have to pay to be irritated by the ads? Please, stop advertising cars. I know what's available and where to find it.
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You are obviously not in their target demographic. (Score:2, Funny)
sure (Score:3, Interesting)
With that said, hemi refers to the shape of the combustion chamber, hemispherical.
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Aren't TV ads already targetted? (Score:5, Funny)
Tv commercials a "waste of your time" ? (Score:5, Informative)
YES!!!! (Score:2, Funny)
I wan't that NOW... NOW!!!! I say!!!!!
see cringely, january 2006, for details (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
The future of ads is product insertion ... (Score:5, Interesting)
you're right.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Google the next MS? (Score:2)
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What would you say to blacksmith's when Henry Ford was getting started? Were horseshoes their pond? Would you make them stay in it?
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Same thing over the Internet (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been working on a similar idea, except that the video is delivered over the Internet. With the WideSAN [widesan.com] 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.
Anyone remember AdExact Corp? (Score:2, Informative)
AdExact [archive.org] was a small company located in Waterloo, Ontario, and was founded by Stephen Basco (of the PixStream fortune [cisco.com]). 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 a
I can see it now... (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Commoditisation of targeted marketing. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.