Grail-based Marketing

Horseman of the Google-pocalypse riding the media landscape this week.

(1) Google/EchoStar

On the face, it’s a deal where Google will auction TV ad inventory from Echostar’s DISH satellite network to sell in Google’s tried and true auction-based model.  While the new deal allows day part targeting, it’s most likely unsold/remnant (=”crap”) inventory.  Spot Runner offers similar auction-based pricing for remnant cable inventory.

 What makes this really interesting is that Google/Echostar will offer second-by-second ad viewing ratings to advertisers who will know exactly how many folks watched and whether they tuned out.  Read that again for emphasis – I’ll wait for you. This, after Nielsen has hemmed and hawed opps for YEARS (with no signs of progress) claiming “challenging hurdles” to deliver advertisement ratings to marketers. And Google/Echostar has got big name advertisers who spend millions in traditional advertising, to participate – Intel is one, and others include marketers laser-focused on return-on-investment (ROI) – eTrade, 1800Flowers.

TV could become as accountable as online.

This announcement puts the current metrics providers and spot industry on notice.

Couple possible scenarios:

• Nielsen realizes they can’t screw around and (over the objections of the entrenched interests it represents and plays with) suddenly unveils an accelerated effort to get advertisement rankings into their own systems, and creates a viable (and more recognized) competitor to Google’s metrics-supported efforts.  This could happen, but the fact that Google wraps in the auction info for true end-to-end analytics will be a tough one to beat without help…
• In the short to long term, assuming Google can quantify and automate branding metrics, not just sales (brrrrrrr), Nielsen gets “extinct”-ed.

Tom Winner (W+K's ass-kicking, name-taking TV guru) says that IF this test works, it will impact the spot market first. But marketers will be watching – and if Google pull this off “…it won’t be remnant space anymore, it’ll be real space, and there will be more than satellite, there will be cable, and more”. Winner pointed out to me that the auction-based broadcast buying model is limited in that it lack the added value and enhanced packages real, live negotiators can secure, but it's a development he's got his eye on.

(2) Google/DoubleClick

DoubleClick is known as an ad serving company.  They are much more than that, but a core service they provide is handling a significant portion of the web’s display and rich media advertising. Thank them for those banners you ignore. This sounds like a “pipes” deal – you know, big players shuffling around ad serving plumbing.  But it’s more than that – much more. Right now, Google has access to some of the biggest advertisers search campaign results data. Through those marketers search advertising programs, Google knows the words important to them, they know the result of those terms and they know the value of those terms in real time. And they retain that data. They also know the value of those terms to those marketers’ competitors. Brrrrrr.

Acquiring DoubleClick would give them credibility in the display and rich media space, access to a lot of tools and capability, a blue chip list of clients and agency partners AND access to a trove of information that could be synched into a seamless picture of online media performance across search and display. 

They’ll have an unprecedented amount of data about consumer and marketer activity.  Including the dollar figures to quantify them.   Mmmmmm.

WHERE DOES THIS LEAD?

Google’s got deep pockets, a share-holder driven need to expand, and a compelling if at times, messianic, vision.  Between their

• local efforts (“Google Base”)
• radio experiments (dMarc)
• newspaper ads (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061030-085144)
• magazine efforts (http://news.com.com/Google+takes+ad+sales+to+print/2100-1024_3-5844889.html)     
• digital out of home (http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3624571)
• EchoStar deal and
• Potential DoubleClick acquisition,     
• add in RFID chips and their vast data warehouses

…Google is positioning themselves to offer marketers a holy grail or a holy terror: Fully optimizable end-to-end marketing (with dynamic, real-time results) across all channels.

More on this to come.