Google Heads into the Tube
The time has finally come for Google to fulfill all the buzz about its entrance into the television advertising game. According to sources, the search king has been testing out trial ads with a few partners and advertisers in Concord, California, which is in the northern part of Google’s home state.
Depending on who you ask, the U.S. television advertising market is worth about $50-55 billion each year, which dwarfs the $20 billion per year that advertising on the Internet is worth. So, it’s pretty obvious that Google’s potential success in television ads would cause its competitors both offline and online to fret. But will Google’s online bite translate into television stardom?
Many are not sold on the idea, partly because there is already a company that has grabbed a strong foothold in delivering location-specific ads to cable stations in the U.S.
Spot Runner has been in the game for three years already, and helps advertisers to "Personalize a TV ad," "Select a TV schedule," and "Launch your campaign," according to its homepage. It also creates ads for smaller businesses.
The startup is confident that its established connections and technology gives it an advantage over Google.
If this is true, there is a very simple solution for Google: acquire Spot Runner.
CBS, WPP, and Interpublic Group are among the investors who have granted Spot Runner $60 million over the past three years. This possibility is, of course, drawing no comments from either side, but the idea is logical and very possible.
Things could get even more interesting should a Google competitor make the most attractive bid to acquire Spot Runner. After losing out on YouTube and failing to get Facebook, Yahoo! must surely be mulling over the move.
Even if Google were to swoop up Spot Runner, or any of the other smaller players in the space, it would not guarantee success in television ads by any means. One only has to look back at the past year to see how Google’s move into radio advertising, which involved the acquisition of dMarc, has failed to show anything to get excited about. The same could be said about its early tests in print ads.
Google’s brand name recognition should help it somewhat, and if it is able to seamlessly and effectively integrate all means of advertising into its AdWords service, its actions should raise some eyebrows. But it seems that for now, Google’s dominance in online ads has not been carried over into other offline realms with nearly as much success.
The more advertising arenas Google enters, the more enemies the search giant will make, and the more opportunities its competitors will have to take their jabs at the Web superstar.
Sources:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/11/google-testing-
tv-ads-in-california/
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3665056
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=21611&hed=
Google%E2%80%99s+TV+Competitors§or=Industries&
subsector=InternetAndServices
http://www.spotrunner.com/
