• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, January 31, 2011

Viamedia, a rep firm that sells on behalf of a collection of cable systems, will offer some of the inventory it controls for bidding on the Google TV Ads system. The rep firm said advertisers buying time through Google's auction-based system will be able to reach the 2 million homes it serves on 68 cable networks.

The inventory will be up for bid later this year. In addition to several cable systems among the country's 25 largest -- such as WOW, RCN and Atlantic Broadband -- Viamedia also reps telco TV provider Verizon. It does not sell for the largest cable operators, which use NCC Media.

Lexington, Kentucky-based Viamedia places ads in dozens of markets on behalf of 18 operators.

Google TV Ads also offers inventory on Dish Network, Verizon and DirecTV. But DirecTV only allows TV Ads to offer space on 11 cable networks, so available inventory is different for the three.

Google executive Mark Piesanen wrote in a blog post that TV Ads inventory now includes 37 million homes, while 1,200 GRPs and 1.5 billion impressions are available for purchase a week.

Google TV Ads allows advertisers to place a bid on inventory to reach a highly targeted demographic. They receive detailed performance reports culled from second-by-second, set-top-box data not long after a spot runs.