can google measure anything?

I'm going to take a step away from social media news and trends for a quick second and make a post about our friend, Google.

Google TV is the search guru's advertising department responsible for TV ads (fairly intuitive). In a recent ClickZ article, it has been reported that Google has added two new reporting metrics that start to bring valuable measures to traditional media (television in this case). The first reporting functions is similar to the Conversion tools that are available with Google Adwords. Users can track the correlation between the frequency of their ads airing on TV and the change (hopefully and increase) in website traffic. This could be a dream come true for marketers, who have always struggled to place a value on the reach and more importantly the effect of their ads. This is especially true for the TV medium, but with the ever increasing presence of the internet, website exploration and further inquiry via the internet is most likely the consumers' first move in the adoption process. Although this metric may not provide any 'intent-to-purchase'-type information it is a way to determine whether your ads are stirring up any interest or if they are being ignored completely. The second of the reporting functions is "audience data reporting." This metric allows advertisers to gain demographic information as determined by consumers' set-top boxes. The ClickZ article notes this importance here is the fact that this is a way to determine which segments are viewing your ads - another fundamental question that traditional marketers sometimes struggle to answer.

Although these tools may not seem totally groundbreaking, the importance here is that advertisers have gained some credible tools to measure the effect of their ads and grasp an idea of who is watching them.