Speaking at the annual National Association of Broadcasters Show – in Las Vagus – Daniel Alegre, President of Global Partnerships at Google outlined their future plans for TV.
Not being content with indexing the digital realm Google today have discussed plans to start surfacing live television broadcasts along with digital options when people search for a show. As an example if a user searched for The Big Bang Theory not only would it surface results from installed apps, as well as Google Play and other online and streaming sources but it would also show live viewing options from TV Networks.
In a world where digital is becoming more prevalent, and the smartphone is ever more the hub of many people’s existences it makes sense for both Google and the TV networks to partner up to surface live viewing options in search results.
That’s not the extent of Googles plans, however. They also announced that they are moving into the TV “monetisation” space, read that as a new Ad Network for TV. They have launched DoubleClick’s Dynamic Ad Insertion. In short Google will take a live stream and weave into it Ad’s relevant to the user watching the program. So if 3 people are all watching the same show on different devices they will all see different Ads targeted at them. There’s a short video below outlining the concept.
The new service works for both Live and on-demand content, but it’s safe to assume that it only works when delivered over the internet, which in 5 to 10 years may be the majority of “TV” in the developed world.
It’s fairly clear that Google is attempting to get in front of the transition of TV from broadcast to a streaming media. It’s not hard to imagine a world where Google is able to take over a large share of the traditional TV advertising market.
As target advertising becomes more and more prevalent on more and more platforms the need for the likes of Google, and their competition, to “get it right” will ever increase. It’s a little annoying now to see banner ads for items you just purchased, imagine if those same ads were served to you everywhere you consumed ad-supported content?
There was no mention of the scope of this release, however, it would be safe to assume that you won’t be seeing any customised streams down under anytime soon.
How do you feel about Google making the move into the TV space? Let us know in the comments.
