Now you can buy TV ads through Google’s DoubleClick

Google is announcing that advertisers can now buy traditional TV advertising through the DoubleClick Bid Manager.

Bid Manager is the main DoubleClick ad-buying product, so Google is pitching this as a way to manage TV and online ad campaigns from the same place.

“Historically, TV and digital advertising have been bought and measured through different systems and currencies,” Google writes. “By adding traditional TV buying into DoubleClick Bid Manager, we are taking the first step towards allowing advertisers and agencies to manage their video campaigns across digital and linear TV, in a more efficient and effective way.”

Google has dabbled in TV advertising before, for example through Google Fiber, but this looks like it could be the company’s most significant move into the market — and an important step in the blurring of the lines between buying online and TV ads.

To make this happen, DoubleClick has been integrated with other TV ad companies and products, including Wideorbit, Clypd and Google Fiber. Across these partnerships, Google says advertisers will have access to both national and local ad inventory.

And these ads can also be tied to DoubleClick’s online measurement, like seeing whether a TV ad drives more Google and YouTube searches for the brand being advertised.