Google abandons TV Advertising

After five-year effort of attempting to revolutionize TV advertising, using auctions and algorithms from 2007, Google has given up, and quietly announced in a blogpost that it would close its TV Ads in Adwords product later this year. The desicion was motivated by the growing interest in watching content across mobile devices, Google reported.

The article explained “In 2007, we launched Google TV Ads in AdWords to bring digital buying and measurement technologies to traditional TV advertising. Since then, lots of our clients have bought traditional TV advertising for the first time…. However, video is increasingly going digital and users are now watching across numerous devices. So we’ve made the hard decision to close our TV Ads product over the next few months and move the team to other areas at Google.” The program, which initially joined NBCUniversal and the Hallmark Channel, was expected to incorporate the speed, flexibility and targeting capabilities of the world wide web with the emotional impact of the 30-second spot. Its network of associates allowed clients to reach around 42mn US television families across more than 100 TV networks, including ESPN, TNT and CNN.

Google TV Ads was not very successful, but Google made an effort for quite some time after closing similar services for newpapers and radio advertising in 2009. The ad platform was anticipated to receive an important increase from Google TV, in an attempt to marry the PC-based Internet and the conventional TV broadcasting. It demonstrates again that Google is trying to play a long game. While online video’s $3.12 billion market is far from TV’s $70 billion segment, Google is always able to foresee the trends, as TV goes digital and spreads to mobile devices. Meanwhile, Google is promoting its popular YouTube video website to become more like a traditional broadcaster, with channels of professional and frequently up-to-date content, in an effort to get more regular visitors and more valuable advertising.

“We’ll be doubling down on video solutions for our clients (like YouTube, AdWords for Video, and ad serving tools for web video publishers),” Mr. Mehrotra wrote. “We also see opportunities to help users access web content on their TV screens, through products like Google TV.”

Concentrating on on their strongest area, the Internet, this is an indicator that Google is not ready to control traditional advertising like TV, newspapers and radio, but also newer and more sophisticated projects (such as Google TV, Google Project Glass, and the world’s first self-driving car).