New Google Ad Planner tool to assist advertisers and media buyers with where to place ads.
Stefanie Berliant
Media Coordinator
This week Google announced a new feature: Google Ad Planner. This tool is designed to help online advertisers and media buyers determine where to place ads by identifying websites that target audiences are likely to visit. Ad Planner will provide a list of relevant websites by defining age, gender, income, geography, language, education level, and other websites. Additionally, it provides site demographics for each of those websites. With the introduction of Ad Planner, Google has entered the web measurement services industry, the territory of industry leaders such as Hitwise, comScore and Neilsen Online.
These industry leaders mainly collect their data by tracking large panels of people. Ad Planner’s data is generated from a variety of sources, including tracking large panels and third party market research, but it will be based mostly on data from web servers which should provide a more extensive view of internet use. Not all websites are included in the list of relevant websites due to low traffic volume, exclusion files placed on websites, or websites not adhering to quality guidelines. One major advantage of Ad Planner is that it is free and this will inevitably affect the web measurement industry.
In its infancy, there are several obstacles that do not make Ad Planner a one stop shop. You cannot buy ad placements on sites through Google Ad Planner, nor can you contact publishers directly through the tool. It is not yet synched with AdWords or Analytics to complete the relationship between the tools, however, the export feature will suffice for now.
Overall, this tool is useful, I would use it to supplement my research and add it to my arsenal of tools. I appreciate the innovation of Google trying to make my job more efficient and effective. But only time will tell whether Google Ad Planner will become the new web measurement industry leader.
Tags: Advertising, Google, Google Ad Planner, Measurement Services Industry, Media Buys, online advertising, web measurement
