Data is god, Google is pujari ;-)

From Business Week

Google will pay Nielsen an undisclosed amount to obtain detailed information about the kinds of people who watch specific TV shows.

Google's access to the information is significant because it gives the Mountain View-based company more tools to draw upon as it tries to target television ads as effectively as it has done on the Internet

Since May, Google has been delivering television ads for about 14 million subscribers to EchoStar Communication Corp.'s Dish network and Astound Broadband cable service.The set-top boxes used by EchoStar and Astound enabled Google to track when commercials were watched and for how long. By drawing on Nielsen's data, Google will now have information on what kinds of viewers are watching the commercial.

"This was a missing piece of puzzle for us," said Keval Desai, Google's director of product management for TV ads.