Content

Google & NBC Break TV Ad Deal

About two years ago, NBC and Google teamed up to enable Google to sell TV ads to be aired on NBCU cable channels. adWeek reports the deal has be “aborted.”

adWeek said:

NBC Universal and Google have discontinued their ad sales partnership begun in 2008, the companies have confirmed. The split deprives Google’s TV ad sales unit of one of its major alliances, although it still has deals in place with Dish TV, DirecTV and a handful of smaller networks like Ovation and the Tennis Channel.

Why did the partnership end? Reportedly NBC wasn’t benefiting at all from it. The report said, there was “little value derived from having an Internet company sell its ads.” And advertisers told adWeek, “There was little if any prime-time inventory available for Syfy,” so there was no real benefit to advertisers?

More coverage of this story can be found at Techmeme.

Explore more on

Advertising Adweek DIRECTV Dish Network Google NBC NBCUniversal Techmeme Television advertisement
Add Search Engine Land as a preferred source on Google

Editorial disclosure

Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality coverage of marketing topics. Unless otherwise noted, this page’s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.

About the author

Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.