Google Inc. is set to enter the television advertising business. The search company has signed a multi-year deal with U.S. satellite TV company EchoStar Communications Corp. by which it will offer timeslots on the latter's DISH Network to advertisers to display their advertisements.

The two companies said they have entered into a partnership to devise an online automated system to allow advertisers to buy time slots and assess viewership statistics on TV ads running on the 125-channel network.

Google, which has pioneered the pay-per-click web-based advertising system that changed the whole concept of online advertising, is intending to extend the system to offline media, including newspapers, magazines and audio-visual.

Google's director of product management for Google TV Ads Keval Desai said if the system works, viewers will be the beneficiaries to see more relevant advertisements. It will help the important audio-visual medium to get its mojo back, he said.

He added that the new service will allow network operators and ad buyers to reach the fragmented TV audiences.

Desai said his company has been carrying out tests with a cable operator, Astound Broadband in Concord, a suburb of San Francisco, for several months and it is now in discussions with all the major broadcast networks, cable companies and satellite service providers to introduce the system.

However, response to the proposal from larger cable TV operators is not known. Analysts say most of these companies are very secretive about their viewership data and do not share it with the customers.

The U.S. television advertising business is worth around $70 billion a year.

Some of the advertisers, who were offered chances to use Google TV Ads felt the new service provides the much-needed accountability in the industry, which has not been there previously.

EchoStar has a two-way signal system in place for its 13.1 million customers, which can provide information to ad buyers on time slots available and they can upload the video for display. They can subsequently track viewership data too. The system provides data on viewership on the basis of geographic and other groups. However, there will be no information on individual viewing habits possible.

EchoStar's executive vice president Mike Kelly said Google can sell time slots of two minutes to 10 minutes per hour of program across its entire network. The final live testing of the system is slated for May.

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