NBC Universal in pact for Google to sell its TV ads

The main entrance to the NBC television network studios is pictured in Burbank, California, October 11, 2007.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co, is teaming up with Google Inc on a multi-year partnership in which Google will act as a broker to sell TV advertising on some NBC cable channels.

In a joint statement, the two companies said NBC Universal will offer advertising time from several of its cable networks for Google to sell advertising through its Google TV Ads service.

The deal, set to go into effect in coming months, covers advertising inventory on Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth, and Chiller, with more NBC Universal channels possible in the future, the companies said.

"Advertisers using the Google TV Ads platform can reach NBCU Cable's national audience and gain access to viewership data at an unprecedented scale," the NBC Universal and Google statement said.

Mike Pilot, president of NBC Universal sales and marketing, and Tim Armstrong, Google's president of advertising and commerce for North America, said that the partnership would make TV ads more accountable.

Through an existing deal with DISH Network, the Google TV Ads service can report second-by-second TV usage data allowing advertisers to measure viewership of their ads more precisely. The NBC-Google partnership extrapolates on the data supplied by Dish set-top boxes in millions of U.S. homes.

NBC Universal and Google have also agreed to work together to adapt the Google TV Ad service for use in local TV markets. They are also collaborating on custom marketing and research projects using Google TV Ads to survey audience trends.

(Reporting by Paul Thomasch in New York and Eric Auchard in San Francisco, editing by Leslie Gevirtz).