Apparently, after being tested in the US, Google are considering bringing its TV advertising service to the British market. It would be their first so-called offline advertising scheme this side of the atlantic.

Dish Network, the United States’ second-largest satellite operator have been working with Google on technology that allows advertisers to see how many people are watching their adverts.

Google already have a search-and-video partnership with BSkyB in the UK. BSkyB are apparently keen to improve the targeting of advertising.

Google’s European, Middle Eastern and African product manger, Mario Queiroz, said that the company would be looking at opportunities in the UK TV market if the trials over in the US are a success.

Google’s TV Ads service cleverly takes information from the set-top boxes and calculates how many people are watching the adverts. The success of Google’s Adwords Online service, which allows advertisers to buy keywords. When searching, Google users are able to view ads relevant to to their search.

Data from the trials will be compiled by engineers and put in a usable in Google’s London Office.

Sky and Google see the more than 3 million people who have a Sky+ personal video recorder set-top box (about a third of its users) as an obvious test bed for such technology.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/07/google.internet