Google Shutters TV Ads Business

MOUNTAIN VIEW: After five years in operation, Google has decided to close its TV Ads business, which functions as an online marketplace for purchasing television advertising.

The effort was launched in 2007 as a way to bring digital buying and measurement technologies to traditional TV advertising. Google says that within that time "lots of our clients have bought traditional TV advertising for the first time."

However, "video is increasingly going digital and users are now watching across numerous devices," writes Shishir Mehrotra, the VP of product at Google, in a company blog post. "So we’ve made the hard decision to close our TV Ads product over the next few months and move the team to other areas at Google. We’ll be doubling down on video solutions for our clients (like YouTube, AdWords for Video, and ad serving tools for web video publishers). We also see opportunities to help users access web content on their TV screens, through products like Google TV."