Google TV Unveils Two New Reporting Functions

Google today announced two new reporting capabilities for its Google TV Ads service, bringing more data to a service already renowned for its metrics-heavy approach.

“These are the two latest and greatest in our steps toward empowering advertisers with data so they can make their TV spend more efficient,” Meredith Papp, Google product marketing manager, said.

Google TV clients can now track the correlation between the airing of their TV ads and traffic on their Web sites on an hourly basis. A “Graph by Hourly” icon has been added to the Google TV dashboard that allows clients to see hourly measurements of their Web traffic compared with their TV exposure. The idea is to help clients determine how much impact their TV commercials are having on their Web traffic.

ClickZ reported that the shift to hourly metrics was expected in a comprehensive report on Google TV published last month. The comparisons were previously offered only on a daily basis.

The move to hourly reports was necessary to accommodate those clients with a heavy TV presence, Papp said.

“Now you can really more easily draw that correlation about which airing delivered the most bang for the buck in the form of Web site traffic, and as result you can start to identify which ads placed on certain networks or certain versions of my creative are driving traffic more efficiently than others, which in this economy is helpful,” she said.

Google TV is also now offering audience data reporting, which allows advertisers to see how well its TV ads reached specific demographics. Clients can search for audience types based on qualities such as age, household income and marital status, for example, and learn how much of a specific group was exposed to their ad based on set-top box data.

Papp said such audience data was particularly valuable to brand advertisers, a segment of the marketing population that Google TV has struggled to reach given its focus on direct-response style feedback.

“In addition to making sure they are reaching a big audience, brand advertisers want to make sure they are reaching the right audience — Are they reaching the moms that are going to buy the diapers?” she said. “I think both of these tools are a good value for brand advertisers.”