Channel 4 runs Taskmaster ad break takeover with Google tasks

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October 21, 2021

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1 minute

Google and Channel 4 announced a linear and digital partnership today where they create mini tasks with past and present contestants of Taskmaster.

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Ella Sagar Ella Sagar is a reporter for The Media Leader and leads our audio and out-of-home coverage. She joined in September 2021 and has a gold standard NCTJ. She previously wrote for the South West Londoner, Ealing Times, and The Hillingdon Times. At the University of Leeds, she received a First Class Honours Degree in French and Spanish with distinction in speaking and during her time there regularly presented radio shows on Leeds Student Radio, wrote for the student paper The Gryphon and was editor of Her Campus Leeds.

Google will take over an ad break for Taskmaster tonight in which the online behemoth creates mini-tasks for past and present contestants of the comedy show.

An edit of the first task will premiere on an entire ad break during tonight’s episode at around 9.10pm on Channel 4.

The Taskmasker’s assistant and show creator Alex Horne will run two new tasks for two comedians, ex-contestant Al Murray and current series’ contestant Desiree Burch (pictured, above).

The tasks will require help from Google using tools like Google Translate and Google Lens.

For the following six weeks, the campaign will go across linear and digital as Channel 4 will post edits of these tasks to their Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram accounts alongside Google and the featured comedians.

Taskmaster, fronted by comedian Greg Davies, is currently airing its 12th series on Channel 4 after the broadcaster bought the show from Dave, where it debuted in 2015.

Overnight figures from BARB show that last week’s episode in the individuals 4+ category had a peak audience of 1.35 million at 9.40pm, its highest share of audience for that time slot was 8.5%. This is the audience that watched the programme live or before 2am the following morning.

Channel 4 said the campaign was a result of collaboration between its media agency OMD UK and Google’s media agency Essence. Production was by Avalon and 4Studio.