Google plans to make its first foray into the old-fashioned world of television advertising with spots promoting its Chrome browser this weekend.

Google Japan had already released a 30-second video promoting Chrome on YouTube, but the company will distribute that video through the Google TV Ads network this weekend as an experiment to see if it can drum up interest in Chrome, its new browser. Google said it's using the research it has done on measuring the relevance of television ads in order to place the Chrome ad appropriately.

Chrome was also featured as part of a huge ad on the front page of The New York Times' Web site Friday, with several different videos promoting the browser. Those are also available, of course, on YouTube.

For a consumer brand of its size, Google does relatively little advertising. It put Chrome ads on YouTube in January, but "house ads" are a little different than network television exposure. Likewise, T-Mobile advertises the "G1 with Google" in hyping up the Android-powered G1, but that's not exactly the same as making Google the focus of the ad.