Online advertising is set to reach $26 billion by 2011, according to one projection. But that will still only add up to 9 percent of the U.S. ad market. That's why Google is going after the $74 billion TV advertising market, according to Donna Bogatin at the Digital Micro-Markets blog.
"When you watch the television you see ads that are clearly not targeted for you," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference.

Schmidt isn't just grousing about this -- he aims to change it. Already, the company has started to apply its targeting techniques to the $20 billion radio market it entered through the acquisition of dMarc broadcasting. Now, as the Browser noted back in March, Google is hiring engineers to build similar technology for television, allowing Google to place ads on behalf of advertisers just as it does on Web pages today.

Is the world ready for such a grandiose expansion of the Google empire? Yes, according to at least one netizen. "This sounds great to me," writes blogger Thor. "I absolutely HATE TV commercials, especially how they become up to 50 percent louder than the TV show you were just watching, to 'get your attention,' and I would absolutely LOVE to see what my boys at Google can do with it."