Google, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, has been testing TV ad serving in a move which targets the $54 billion market for TV ads.  Google already serves search ads, contributing about 99% of their $10 billion in revenue, and has been testing serving radio ad placements recently.  

This delve into traditional advertising’s stronghold is sure to upset the old media, who are seeming more and more vulnerable each day.  It will be interesting to see who opens their hands to this initiative and which old media reject it.

I’m also surprised that neither Yahoo nor Microsoft have even been attempting to keep up with Google in these endeavors.  Microsoft has already learned the hard way with their search engine, “Live”, and their “adCenter” search ad system that second (or third) place just doesn’t cut it.  Microsoft Live is scraping along at 10% of the search engine market, and adCenter has not proven itself to be much of a competitor, despite the much hyped “Behavioral Targeting” that adCenter uses to serve ads.  Yahoo’s Panama ad system meanwhile, has shown better conversion rates than Google’s AdWords, but is still trailing quite a bit.