Google TV Ads is about to become a significantly more powerful marketing system.  A new pact with TiVo will allow Google to gather (and then pass on) very precise data about which commercials are being viewed, and even (to a lesser degree) who is doing the watching.

Mike Steib, Google's director of emerging platforms, explained the arrangement in a formal statement.  "This deal with TiVo will give advertisers access to even more anonymized viewership data, making Google's dataset one of the best in the industry," Steib said.  "Advertisers can use this data to understand which audiences and ads are most effective, which we think will ultimately lead to more relevant ads for viewers."

This development is likely to result in heavier use of Google TV Ads, too.  After all, the more data Google can provide, the less risky its program will seem, perhaps causing marketers to embrace it over alternatives or give TV ads a shot for the very first time.

What's a little harder to discern is how TiVo benefits from the arrangement.  Presumably Google paid more than a couple of dollars for access to TiVo users' data; all Todd Juenger, TiVo's vice president and general manager of audience research and measurement, would say is that this acts "to help the media industry better understand the effectiveness of ad campaigns in an evolving TV landscape."

Anyway, Google TV Ads is supposed to be able to reach 96 million households as things stand, and has served over 100 billion ad impressions to date.

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