Google Takes Wraps Off Ad-Planning Tool
Internet Measurement Tool Helps Find Best Online Audience
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 6/24/2008 1:05:00 PM
New York—At a key advertising-research gathering here, Google Tuesday introduced an Internet measurement tool aimed at helping media planners find the best Web sites to most effectively reach their target audiences.
![Google co-founders Larry Page [left] and Sergei Brin.](/photo/76523-googlepage_brin.jpg)
Internet giant Google took the wraps off Google Ad Planner during the Advertising Research Foundation’s Audience Measurement 3.0 Conference in Manhattan. The media planning tool, which can be downloaded here, is free for ad agencies to use to decide what sites to buy online ads on.
Google’s move into Internet-audience measurement could challenge veteran measurement companies who are also tracking online use, such as Nielsen and ComScore.
As it unveiled the new product at the conference, with an explanation by Wayne Lin, Google business product manager, the Internet-search engine behemoth also outlined its fledgling media-planning tool on the Google AdWords blog.
“If you're a media planner at an ad agency, you know that planning an online display buy can be challenging, particularly in scaling your campaign's reach while keeping it relevant for your target audience,” the blog said. “Plus, how do you keep track of the millions of sites out there that might be just right for your campaign? To make your life easier, we're introducing Google Ad Planner, a research and media planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers.”
To use Google Ad Planner, an ad agency would enter into it the demographics and sites associated with the target audience they want to reach. The Ad Planner site will then come back with information about sites that the target audience is likely to visit, and the ad agency can them go forward and create the appropriate media plan.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Lin did a 15-minute presentation on Ad Planner, which reportedly incorporates and uses data from Web servers, unlike other companies that cull Web-usage data from panels of people or through surveys.
During a question-and-answer session after his presentation, Lin said the demographic data that Google Ad Planner will provide will “fuse” information from several sources. He also added that Google will at some point "'entertain' getting MRC accreditation."
Two of the players that track online usage, ComScore and Nielsen, couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday on Google’s Ad Planner, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
But a third company that gauges Internet traffic, Quantcast, did issue a response to Google’s announcement.
“After two years in the market, Quantcast has significant publisher participation delivering accurate traffic and audience data for over 10 million Web destinations, including some of the Web's top Web sites and blogs,” Quantcast CEO Konrad Feldman said.
He claimed that Google’s announcement was a validation of Quantcast’s vision, but that there were important differences in their approaches.
“Quantcast offers a collaborative and open audience discovery platform putting publishers and marketers in control of their audiences and data,” Feldman said. “Of course, Google controls an extensive data platform, and the market must ask the question if this new product is simply intended to help Google sell inventory and a broader set of controlled services.”
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