Advertising solutions

Mountain View, California - As part of its continuing effort to offer innovative advertising solutions to its clients, NBC Universal will join forces with Google to form a strategic multi-year advertising, research and technology partnership. The two companies will work together to develop more effective advertising metrics, attract non-traditional advertising partners to NBCU and incorporate self-service buying opportunities through the Google TV Ad advertising platform.

Mike Pilot, President, NBC Universal Sales and Marketing and Tim Armstrong, Google’s President of Advertising and Commerce, North America made the announcement.

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.

“We’re extremely pleased to join forces with Google on this effort, which will help us develop better accountability and ROI metrics for our advertisers and attract an entirely new group of clients to television advertising,” said Pilot. “This is another step in our commitment to trying innovative advertising approaches and testing new technologies that can help benefit our clients.”

“The Google TV Ads platform is making television advertising more accountable and measurable and we’re pleased with our progress to date,” said Armstrong. “Our partnership with NBCU will help us bring the power of television to a broader set of advertisers as well as give our current advertisers increased reach through our system.”

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

“This is a great way to reach clients who are interested in buying television advertising but may not have previously had the resources or ability to do so,” said Frank Comerford, President, Platform Development and Commercial Operations, NBC Local Media. “A self-service ad platform will be a great complement to our existing sales efforts and help us further connect our clients to their customers.”

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.

“We’re pleased that NBCU will make some of its inventory available on Google’s TV Ads platform,” said Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group. “The partnership will generate real value for our clients by providing us with a more measurable-and actionable-understanding of how consumers engage with content.”

Coutesy of Imperial Valley News