p2pnet news | Advertising:- Billions of dollars are spent on advertising. But just how effective is it?.

Companies and associated services try desperately to find ways to differentiate products which, to all intents and purposes, are identical.

So, forcing ‘product’ in front of people is what it’s all about and to keep on making money, the likes of Google have to know exactly who you are, where you are, what you’re doing, why and where you’re doing it, what you buy, and from whom you buy it.

It’s called data mining.

With the DoubleClick merger safely (it hopes) tucked away in the background, in April Google said it was checking out TV ads, together with partners EchoStar and Astound Cable.

Now it’s, “set to announce a partnership today with the Nielsen Company, the voice of authority in measuring television audiences, that will give advertisers a more vivid and accurate snapshot than ever before of how many people are viewing commercials on a second-by-second basis, and who those people are,” says the New York Times, going on:

At a time when digital video recorders are proliferating, advertisers are thirsty for any data they can get about who is watching their ads, who is fast-forwarding past them and where it makes the most sense to invest.

In a letter to Canada’s Competition Commissioner, “A Google-DoubleClick merger will greatly affect electronic commerce,” said Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic director Philippa Lawson when news of the DoubleClick deal was still in the headlines.

“Through the merger, Google-DoubleClick will gain unprecedented market power, with which they can manipulate online advertising prices,” she said. “Advertisers and web publishers will have no real choice but to choose Google’s advertisement platforms in order to remain visible in the e-commerce market.”

And that’s the way Google intends to keep it, hence the Nielsen project.

It says it’s aiming to, “deliver better ads to viewers and help advertisers, operators and programmers more efficiently buy, schedule,” according to New Media Age, continuing:

“The Nielsen deal will now allow Google to obtain data from set-top boxes from households across the US that use Echostar’s Dish Network, letting them understand the effectiveness of ads and viewer information, such as gender and age.

“David Calhoun, chairman and CEO of the The Nielsen Company, also hinted that the deal might be extended to see Nielsen provide data for other areas.”

Slashdot it!

Also See:
New York Times – In Foray Into TV, Google Is to Track Ad Audiences, October 24, 2007
unprecedented market power – Review Google, DoubleClick deal: CIPPIC, August 3, 2007
New Media Age – Data from set-top boxes, October 24, 2007

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 6:59 am and is filed under Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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