Google is today taking a much-awaited step to integrate the ability for Advertisers to purchase traditional television (TV) commercials via its DoubleClick Bid Manager. Announced at the ongoing National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show in Las Vegas, Google is making the entire TV inventory available to buy programmatically in the United States. This initiative had been running in beta mode for quite some time now.

This is the first step towards allowing advertisers and agencies to manage their video campaigns across digital and linear TV, in a more efficient and effective way.

However, this is not the first time Google is toying with the idea of offering advertisers a chance to purchase TV ads online. It tried to auction ad space to be delivered through set-top boxes via an Adwords-like product, but its approach failed massively. This initiative was then discontinued after 2012. It is now being brought back but with a polished, new soul.

Google is now looking to provide advertisers with a common ground, i.e their DoubleClick product which simplified the ad purchase experience. It enables you to create, manage and grow digital marketing campaigns within Google’s network by placing bids for that perfect advertisement. But, DoubleClick’s role is now being extended to bring advertisers to take smarter decision to run ads offline on traditional TVs as well.

This managerial and analytical tool will now enable you to manage both your digital and TV at a common location, thus laying the groundwork for a programmatic ad purchase. This will enable you to blur the line between managing two campaigns – through two different systems and currencies.

You now need just one screen to witness all your campaigns, data collected and insights. The impact-based metric system will enable you to measure whether a user searched your brand on YouTube or Google after viewing the ad. This falls in line with Google’s recent decision to take on traditional TV with the launch of its own ‘YouTube TV‘ app and $35 per month subscription plan for six accounts.

Google is making this possible by integrating DoubleClick into its partners’ TV ad tech platforms. It has already signed up Wideorbit, Clypd, and Google Fiber (its own high-speed broadband data provider) to enable advertisers to choose from national and local TV ad inventories. It is currently working with 3 partners but plans to sign up new ones, especially large broadcasters, in the coming weeks.

Talking about the same in an official statement,

By integrating with TV inventory providers, including local providers, we’re able to offer agencies and advertisers the ability to buy their TV ads programmatically, through DoubleClick. This means that their TV ads can be bought, targeted and measured on the same platform as their digital video ads and Connected TV ads.

Now, Google has started taking an initial step in the direction of educating advertisers and brands about the options of advanced TV. As per Videology, advanced TV is now the fastest growing TV ad sector and programmatic (and addressable) ad buying for these TVs is expected to cross over 50 percent in the next 3-5 years. Over 57 percent of those surveyed said that they plan to increase their data-enabled TV budgets this year.