Echostar (DISH) and Google (GOOG) have announced plans to partner in an unprecedented strategy to offer a new automated system for delivering, measuring, buying and selling television ads via Echostar's 125 nationwide satellite programming networks.
Terms of the agreement offer Google access to part of the advertising inventory that Echostar has spread across their Dish Network dayparts and channels.
"Our partnership with EchoStar is important for us as we begin to offer a TV advertising platform broadly," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt in the official press statement. "We think we can add value to this important medium by delivering more relevant ads to viewers, providing better accountability for advertisers and better monetize inventory for TV operators and programmers."
The director of Google TV ad sales, Michael Steib, said that the system will be run similar to Adwords. It will be auction-based with advertisers bidding on the available inventory. Google's part will be to oversee the auction and report to advertisers on whether they won the auction and whether their ad was run or not, where and how many of the household boxes delivered. Based upon that information, marketers are then able to adjust their prices with the data available on how their ads performed and under what conditions.
Google ran a beta test of the system with Astound Cable, and participants said that the ability to measure results in real-time were revolutionary. To be able to know within a 24-hour period what ads were watched, and even where within the ads the viewer left them, is an extraordinary look into where a commercial needs to be changed.
Now that the national test is being rolled out, it will be available by invitation only. Many are already saying that is should offer better results for both consumers and advertisers, and that it's the way that television advertising really needs to be measured.
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