Either I’ve become Google-fixated or the search juggernaut is becoming a mainstay in the press lately. Last week, I talked about Google Adword TV ads and now Google itself is going offline with an extensive outdoor campaign in Russia, hoping to cut into the 15-year-old Russian search engine of choice, Yandex.

The reported $250,000 investment includes more than 5,000 outdoor advertisements, including benches and stickers at bus stops and subways. With so much marketing attention being focused on the digital space, it’s great to see that one of the pioneers of online advertising – and a proponent of “the right ad to the right people at the right time” – understands the effectiveness of a well placed ad on a bench.

• impressions delivered
• number of ad plays
• cost
• CPM

Additionally, since all of this information is loaded into the familiar Google Analytics interface, you can view your TV campaign performance right next to your online campaign reports, and even view website traffic and television impressions on the same graph.

Unfortunately, Google’s TV distribution is pretty limited right now, given that their ads can only be fed through Dish Network boxes. However, I have no doubt that this glimpse of what measurement is possible will cause marketers to pressure their other media providers for better data faster. Heck, with an average CMO tenure lasting less than 2 years, they need all the ammunition they can get.

Of course, only time will tell what impact this latest offering has on both the success of Google’s TV Ads product and the industry as a whole, but I think the trend is pretty clear…in the age of ROI, data is king.