Google Partners With Nielsen to Tackle TV Ads

Google’s enormously successful advertising tracking system is making the move to television, reports The New York Times, in a partnership with television ratings expert Nielsen. With the growing popularity of digital video recorders and download services that allowstelevision watchers to time shift skip ads on their television sets, advertisers have grown increasingly anxious to know more.

“The whole promise of Google TV is about better accountability, and you need demographics and targeting to get that accountability,” said one media exec. Google plans to track how long ads are watched before users fast forward or change channels, as well as the most effective times of day. They will rely on Nielsen to provide complementary demographics. (More Google stories.)