Google TV Ads Gains Another Partner in Bloomberg

Less than a month after striking a deal with NBC Universal to represent ad inventory on a number of NBC cable stations, Google has signed a similar pact with Bloomberg Television.

Bloomberg Television will make national cable ad time in the U.S. available through the Google TV Ads platform, a self-service, auction-based system launched officially in May. The similar deal with NBC, announced two weeks ago, has Google selling ads on Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC and other networks.

In a statement announcing the new arrangement, Bloomberg’s head of advertising sales, Trevor Fellows, pointed out that Bloomberg Television’s viewers are “the wealthiest and most powerful” audience in cable television. He said the ad-watching practices of such “high net-worth viewers” are difficult to quantify, but Bloomberg hopes the pairing with Google will help shed some light.

Using set-top boxes, Google gets anonymized viewing data through an agreement with the DISH Network satellite TV system, which also uses Google TV Ads to sell inventory.

Fellows said his company and its advertisers hope the technology will help them learn more about the Bloomberg Television audience. “With this data, advertisers can better understand what consumers are responding to and make real-time adjustments to their campaigns to maximize the return on their TV ad investments,” said Fellows.