Google TV Google has taken a major step to bolster its ad inventory for the fledgling Google TV Ads service by inking a deal with DirecTV to place ads on certain cable networks carried by the satellite TV provider. Combined with its earlier deal with Dish Network, Google TV ads will now reach up to 30 million DBS subscribers in the U.S.
The deal is crucial for Google’s TV ambitions because many cable networks and MSOs have been reluctant to make inventory available to the web giant for fear of its growing market clout. That lack of inventory has hindered the growth the Google TV Ads, which launched in 2007. The DirecTV deal covers the sat-caster’s national inventory in Bloomberg Television, Centric, Chiller, Current TV, Fit TV, Fox Business, Fuel, G4, Ovation, Sleuth and the TV Guide channel.
The real value of the DirecTV deal may not be realized until the launch of Google TV later this year, however. Google’s search-based TV content discovery platform holds the potential to transform the TV advertising business by enabling advertisers who cannot now afford TV time to achieve the same sort of highly efficient targeting Google now enables on the web. The new dollars that could bring into the TV space could make Google’s new TV inventory far more valuable than it is today.
Further reading:
DirecTV Partners With Google TV Ads