Google has been taking about it future plans to become more than just an online search advertising company and break into the traditional media market, selling print and TV advertising.
Having already experimented with selling ads in newspapers and TV, Google believes that marketers would be keen to use a single ad buying system that would let them manage ad inventory more effectively.
According to president of advertising and commerce in North America, Tim Armstrong:
“We’re intent on bringing more and more scale to the digital dashboard space.”
“The offline initiatives have been a real test for us; we’re very very early stage on connecting those businesses. I think this is a two-, three-, five-year product that we’re going to work on.”
According to UBS analyst Ben Schachter, breaking into traditional media could be very lucrative for Google, as he estimates that advertisers could spend as much as $500bn for centralized platforms that track both online and offline advertising by 2020.
Rivals Microsoft and Yahoo are also working on creating similar ad platforms to integrate online and offline advertising, but Google seems to be intent on being the first to offer this service.
Google has been testing in print and radio ads, but seems to have been most effective selling ads on TV. The company has been selling ads for satellite and cable TV companies in the San Francisco area, and has been able to track user behaviour and target ads by using information from set top boxes.
