Google-NBCU in New Cable TVAds Deal

Google and NBC Universal announced yesterday that the two had entered into a partnership. There are national and local aspects, immediately implicating cable only. Here’s what the release said, in relevant part:

On the national level, NBCU will offer advertising time from several of its cable networks to Google’s TV Ads platform. Inventory from Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth, and Chiller will be made available to Google in the coming months, with potential to expand onto other NBCU properties in the future. With the addition of NBC Universal inventory, advertisers using the Google TV Ads platform can reach NBCU Cable’s national audience and gain access to viewership data at an unprecedented scale. With this data, advertisers can better understand what consumers are responding to and make real-time adjustments to their campaign to maximize their ROI.

On the local level, NBCU and Google have also agreed to work jointly on adapting the Google TV Ads platform for local market use.

As part of the agreement, NBC Universal will maintain its direct relationships with agencies and advertisers and can set parameters around the purchase of the available ad time. NBCU will also gain access to the large base of advertisers using Google’s AdWords™ online advertising program, many of whom are not currently television advertisers. The two companies will share in all ad revenue and explore innovative ways to expand the partnership in the future, including adapting the platform to add local inventory.

As part of their effort to help drive value for advertisers, NBCU and Google will also collaborate on a series of custom marketing and research projects using the Google TV Ads platform. Through its partnership with DISH Network, the Google TV Ads platform can report second-by-second set top box data allowing advertisers to measure viewership of their ads more precisely than ever before. The two companies will also take advantage of joint research that will help advertisers and agencies better understand their media mix and optimize their ad campaigns.

This deal is similar to Google Print and Google’s relationship with newspapers, bringing non-newspaper advertisers to the printed product. Here Google is bringing non-TV advertisers to NBC cable programming. Through the Google relationship and platform NBC will be able to gain more insight into user behavior, theoretically offer more ad targeting in many cases and collect more data about viewers’ interaction with commercials.

___

More coverage from the NY Times.

Advertisement