Google Planning UK TV Ad Trial

by Patrick Altoft on September 17, 2008

According to NMA Google is planning a trial of “call to action” TV adverts in the UK.

The trial will see large brands encouraging TV audiences to go online and search Google for a particular phrase or brand related keyword.

Some brands such as Orange are already doing this with campaigns such as “I am” but have been criticised for poor execution. Orange were forced to take out a PPC ad for the term after they could only get their campaign website to second place in the rankings behind an authority site.

The problem with these sort of campaigns is that rather than sending traffic directly to the advertisers website they are directed to a search results page with 10 listings and perhaps 8 PPC adverts. Traffic is going to leak to the 9 listings and 7 PPC ads that are out of the advertisers control.

Google commented:

While we’re constantly experimenting with new ad formats and are very interested in the ways in which search can be integrated with offline media campaigns, we have nothing new to announce at this time.

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Published in: Google

{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Phil Gamble 17/09/2008 at 5:05 pm: I can’t see how that Orange campaign can be cost effective - surely they just have to pay more per visitor - first for the advert and second for their PPC advert. Plus there is always the incentive for other people to specifically target those search terms as customers are told to search rather than visit the site directly.

Surely visiting orange.co.uk is better for both consumers and Orange than a customer searching for a phrase where there will always be leakage.
2 Jon 17/09/2008 at 5:17 pm: Yes, this approach seems to be likely to benefit Google much more than it will benefit the brands in question (because of all the potential leakage you mentioned). I wonder if Google is offering some incentive to the brands to compensate for the leakage?

Cheers, Jon
3 Xyborg 18/09/2008 at 10:29 pm: This sounds like the classic AOL word, I mean… In my country in the past we had AOL and sometimes an ad appeared on the TV calling to use X word on the AOL browser or website to land the users to a specific place.
4 Gareth 19/09/2008 at 2:29 pm: Google only profit from PPC ads though - if Orange had researched the phrase properly in the first place, they could (should?) have got to the top of the organic listings and not needed a PPC ad to take up the top of the search results.

Either way, it’s worth a trial for the brand owners as it will show an exact figure for the effect of having a TV campaign which can be compared against future campaigns.

All of this is likely to be superceded by Targeted set-top box ads which can link your search activities to your viewing habits and serve you ads based on your demographic profile and your level of response.
5 Please add your site here 21/09/2008 at 9:55 pm: im suprised google havent done it already but come on… are there people realy out there without a tv who havent already heard of google. lol