Google TV: Still The Home Of Online Display Advertising

With the recent hooplah surrounding Google's announcement of a video content platform, I wondered what role display ads would play in the new offering.  Plenty, if Google's presentation is any indication:

Google TV will become available in fall 2010 in television sets, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes through partnerships. The platform will sell in Best Buy stores. The speculation began last week that Google would make the announcement at the developers conference. Limited tests are being run with Dish Networks. The tests mostly center on search programming.

And although there is no word yet on how advertising will work through Google Content Network, Google AdWords and Google AdSense, from the demonstration, attendees could see that companies and brands in paid-click and display ads will have exposure on the TV, as they do on the Web. Google TV brings the search browser to the television. Consumers searching the Web on Google TV will see the same ads that are visible on their PC.

The pitch for the new platform means that consumers can toggle from search on the Internet to television programming without the need to navigate through clumsy on-screen directories. A search box will give consumers the same feel on the television that they will find on the Internet. It makes the TV "a natural extension of the Web itself," Rishi Chandra told 5,000 developers at for Google I/O conference in San Francisco. "Video should be consumed on the biggest, best and brightest screen in the house, and that is a TV."

In other words, display advertisers don't look the other way - Google isn't bringing TV to its brand as much as it is bringing the search browser to the TV medium.  Browsers mean display impressions - always have, always will.  Be prepared in this latest evolution of our marketplace!