Google has been growing its connected TV (CTV) offering, and has just announced the “Google TV Network”—introducing ad-buying capabilities for its 125 free live channels—forming part of the tech giant’s FAST (free, ad-supported streaming TV) push. This marks Google’s effort to grow its CTV presence beyond that of YouTube. It would be hard to ignore the rise of YouTube as a dominant CTV format that has benefitted from allowing users to stream content on the wide screen and accounts for a large portion of CTV ad revenue. Nevertheless, YouTube has also undeniably been a boon for CTV viewership overall, pulling users to watch streaming content on their smart TVs and dongles. Per Nielsen’s streaming platform ratings this past December, over…