Google Scores First Deal to Serve TV Commercials

Drunk with its success at dominating the internet ad business, Google wants to start serving up TV commercials, too. The first company to sign up is EchoStar Communications, a satellite TV provider which will announce today a deal with Google to broker commercials across its 125 TV channels.

Advertisers will upload their commercials to Google, use an automated system to choose when and where they want them to run, then compete in an auction to set the price. EchoStar will sell only a small portion of its inventory through Google, at least at first, retaining its ad sales staff to handle most of it.  (More television stories.)