by Search Copywriter
K. Todd
K. Todd
The internet's biggest superpower isn't only an online omnipresence: Google is seeping into many other aspects of 'real-life', too. And recently, the Mountain View search agency turned its attention to the telly for more ad-related fun as it attempted to track the popularity of TV adverts with audiences.How could Google manage such a thing? Well, every week the agency collects data from millions of television set-top boxes - keeping them anonymous, of course - and examines on a second-by-second basis what channels were being tuned to. This tells Google what viewers were watching and when they switched channels and allows the search engine to detail whether viewers were switching over from certain advertisements or continuing to, presumably, watch rather than ignore it.
The data is provided by Google partner, EchoStar. Using it, Google applies tuning metrics - a charting and reporting programme - to return to advertising companies information on how their adverts fared with audiences. The tuning metrics mean that Google can pass on reports of how long people watched any particular advert for and at what point they switched it off - or whether they kept it running all the way through. One such metric is what Google has named the % Initial Audience Retained (%IAR) which, on its official blog, the search giant explains is "the percentage of the audience that was present at the beginning of the ad and then stayed tuned-in through the entire ad.
"If most viewers see an ad they like and decide to stay tuned-in, that ad would have a high %IAR."
While Google accepts and makes clear that audience behaviour varies drastically over the course of the day, what type of programme is being watched, what day it is and the individual, the company asserts that adverts themselves have impact enough to help retain or drive away audiences - and that it can now reveal exactly which adverts work and which do not. If all goes to Google's plan, TV ads could be next in line for a Mountain View makeover.
