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Filed under: Business, Internet, Video, Web services, Google

Google Announces TV Ads, users get watched

google tvEveryone knows its America's number one pastime, and now Google has announced their entrance into the TV ad market.

There has been a lot of speculation recently surrounding the fact that Google's been nosing around the TV market to extend their offline ad experimentations, and it was just a matter of time before the news officially dropped. With this new TV Ad trial, Google hopes to improve user experiences and bring value to both advertisers and publishers. They are currently working with EchoStar and Astound Cable to deliver ads to viewers, as well as helping advertisers and programmers buy, schedule, deliver and of course measure ads on television. We also dropped news this morning about how Google and Dish Networks will be announcing a deal to serve ads over their network.

The ads will be purchased through an automated interface auction model, pricing based on a CPM basis with ads then targeted by demographic, time of day and channel. The ads will be delivered with all reporting and statistics done through set top box technologies. The boxes will report on how many times an ad was viewed and whether it was watched in completion.

So needless to say, if more advertisers buy into Google's technology and take the statistics into consideration when planning campaigns, we might never see boring, useless commercials ever again! Then again, it sure does feel a little like big brother is watching us.

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

View more Time Wasters

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