Google enters TV ad sales market with EchoStar

(Repeating story that moved late Monday with no changes to headline or text)

By Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO, April 3 (Reuters) - Google Inc. (GOOG.O) has struck its first major deal to enter the television advertising business with U.S. satellite TV operator EchoStar, a move that promises to upset the cozy way TV ad impact has been measured.

EchoStar Communications Corp. (DISH.O) and Google on Monday said they have a partnership to create an automated system for buying, selling, delivering and measuring the impact of TV ads running on EchoStar's national, 125-channel DISH Network.

Google, whose pay-per-click Web search ad system has transformed the effectiveness of online advertising, is aiming to bring the same measurability to offline media including radio, print -- and starting in May -- through Google TV Ads.

Caval Desai, director of product management for Google TV Ads, said the new service allows network operators and ad buyers to reach ever-more fragmented TV audiences. "If you are a niche network, you don't get measured today," he said.

But industry analysts said Google is likely to meet with resistance from bigger cable TV operators like Comcast, Time Warner Cable Inc. or Cox Communications, who jealously guard data their cable systems generate on customer-viewing habits, seeing it as the crown jewel of what they sell to advertisers.

It also must face off against Nielsen Media Research -- the incumbent media measurement company synonymous with TV viewing ratings in the United States -- and hot start-ups like Spot Runner, which is backed by WPP, Interpublic and CBS.

At stake is the roughly $70 billion a year U.S. television advertising business -- still far and away the biggest place where corporate brands spend their vast marketing budgets.

"This is pay-for-performance," Caval said, applying the terminology now commonplace in Internet advertising markets but strange to TV markets. Once established in the U.S. market, the company plans to expand internationally, officials said, but gave no timeframe.

VIEWER FEEDBACK IS HOLY GRAIL

Advertisers given early access to Google TV Ads say the accountability the new service promises in measuring how specific ads perform with target audiences is long overdue.

"Today, when I run a 30-second television spot, I would have to be watching TV to know whether it actually ran," complains Steve Jarmon, vice president of brand communications at online florist 1-800-Flowers.com.

"I have to wait weeks for data to come back from network operators about how many views saw an ad," he said.

1-800-Flowers spends half its marketing budget online, and the other half -- some tens of millions of dollars a year -- on TV, radio and newspapers. Mostly that's at holidays -- Mother's Day, Valentine's Day and from Thanksgiving to Christmas.