Google signs 30 media companies, 20 advertisers to Partner Select online video program

Web giant Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced this week that 30 major media companies, among them CBS Interactive, Fox News, Scripps Networks and Discovery Communications, and 20 brand advertisers have signed on to its premium online video advertising service, Google Partner Select.

The service offers programmatic (automated) ad buying from a pool of select inventory, minimizing (and hopefully eliminating) fraudulent or low-quality online video that can show up on other ad exchanges, The Wall Street Journal reports. Google debuted the service in June 2014.

The program is a different one than the company's other ad-buying initiative, Google Preferred, which launched in April 2014 and offers direct sales of online video ad packages along with some programmatic. Also, YouTube is not part of Partner Select, but it is part of the Preferred program.

While Neal Mohan, VP of video display and advertising at Google, told WSJ that brands are looking to use both traditional upfront buying along with programmatic, the publication noted that several major media companies have yet to sign on to the Partner Select program. NBCUniversal, Walt Disney Co. and 21st Century Fox are among that group, which WSJ says "are often cautious when it comes to embracing programmatic ad selling or handing over any aspects of their ad sales process to third parties."

Google's big selling point for Partner Select, besides the low fraud risk, is its ability to deliver more data on how well online video campaigns are doing. Partners will receive reports on things like an ad's viewability (e.g., if it was actually seen by a human), and later in 2015, on ads' "audibility" (whether it could be heard).

For more:
- WSJ has this story

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