People often think about advertising as several different silos that don’t interact with each other. For example, you have digital advertising, which is what most people use for online marketing. Then you have television ads, which are very popular. You also have a variety of other options such as radio, billboards and more. Google is introducing a new feature that is designed to help close the gap between digital ads and television ads.
They first announced this last year with their new feature called “Adometry TV Attribution” that was designed to help measure the digital impact of offline channels. It was primarily for television ads, but could also be used for radio. They are now taking that to the next level by integrating Google Search query data and Rentrack airings data together. This will help advertisers and marketers to better understand just how a television commercial, for example, will impact what people are searching for.
The most obvious example of this will be when a brand runs a commercial on the Super Bowl. Of course, the initial interaction between the ad and the viewer will be immediate. In many cases, however, the commercial will instruct people to go to a website of some sort. People often type in a web search to get to that website. The new feature will link up when the commercial aired, and see how many people begin searching for it in the dime during and shortly after the airing.
Google hopes that this will give a better overall look at how consumers behave when exposed to certain types of media. The examples provided by Google are:
- Accessing Immediate Influence – This will help you to see which messages are being held in the minds of consumers. This can help you to improve television ads as well as improve your SEO efforts.
- Evaluate the Awareness – Using this data you can see how well your commercials are building brand awareness.
- Look at Competitiveness – Learn about which generic keywords are driving the most interest in your category for the industry. Does a specific television ad increase the number of searches for a keyword you might not have expected? If so, you can adjust your ad or search strategies to compensate.
Working with Rentrak
To make this program a success Google needed to be aware of when commercials were running. For this, they teamed up with Rentrak, which is a leading source for TV airing information. This partnership helps to get all the data that is needed as well as get it at speeds which would have otherwise been impossible for Google to get on their own without massive investments into the television analytics field.
Overall this is going to be a significant improvement for anyone who is using both television and digital advertising. It will help to bridge the gap between the two and get improved ROI for the advertising budgets.
