Google Pairs with Nielsen on Data for TV Ads Program

Google’s bid marketplace for television ad inventory has gotten off to a slow start by many measures. By August a Google source told ClickZ just 50 clients had tested the system, and the minimum spend had been set at a modest (for TV) $10,000 a month.

There are signs the marketplace is maturing, if only by small increments. In addition to doubling the inventory in its systemv, Google will now use demographic data from Nielsen in combination with set top box data that allows the company to bill customers only for actual impressions, as opposed to the industry-standard GRP-driven billing model.

As part of the partnership, users of Google TV Ads within the AdWords platform will be able to gauge the demographic composition of audiences through data taken from Nielsen’s TV ratings panels. The companies also plan to “work together” to measure other online data and media, but declined to comment further.

Google launched its Google TV Ads advertising platform earlier this year. Last week In-Stat analyst Gerry Kaufhold said the trials so far “didn’t seem to satisfy all the needs” of broadcasters. “Google has quite a ways to go to get into that broadcast arena.”

Matt Nelson contributed to this post.