Google Ad Planner Review
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If you've ever wanted some serious help with planning your online display ads, cheer up; it's a complicated process, so you're not alone. In fact, Google anticipated your needs when it introduced its Ad Planner in late June 2008. This article thoroughly reviews the tool so you can decide whether it will fit your requirements.
On Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 5:52 AM, Google introduced Google Ad Planner.
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. Plus, how do you keep track of the millions of sites out there that might be just right for your campaign? - Google Adwords Blog
This is a detailed review of this new ad marketing tool from Google.
Google Ad Planner at Glance
What is Ad Planning? Let's explain with an example.
Bob is a marketing manager at COCO Corporation that sells teenage clothes. He has a marketing initiative on his hands with a $2,000,000 budget. Part of the budget is going online. Bob's target market are teenagers, females and males, 14 to 21 years old. His task is to brand COCO clothing as cool, hip teenage wear, and to link young minds with the COCO brand when they think of clothes.
To achieve this, Bob is launching commercials on MTV and other TV stations with a strong teenage audience. He is also buying ad space in movie theaters, computer clubs and other places where teenagers hang out. The goal is to reach his target market at all possible locations.
One of those locations is on the Internet. Teenagers spend a lot of time on the net and Bob has to reach them there as well. How does he know at which web sites teenagers hang out?
This is where Google Ad Planner comes in. It provides marketers with a demographics breakdown for selected web sites that includes valuable information, such as gender, age, education, income and language. Ad Planner helps marketers identify web sites their audience views, and buy advertisements on those web sites.
Google is not the first company to come up with this. Its most notable rivals for providing this service are Nielsen Online and ComScore.
Behind Google Ad Planner
At the time of this writing, Ad Planner is still in beta. You can apply for an account here.
The Ad Planner help center does a wonderful job of explaining things, so let's summarize the most interesting points.
Data comes from Google Search, Google Analytics, "opt-in external consumer panel data" and "other third-party market research." To make it more clear, let's summarize the services Google can potentially use to get data: Search, Reader, Feedburner, Adwords, Adsense, Checkout, Desktop, Earth, iGoogle, Maps, Toolbar, Blogger, Calendar, Docs, Gmail, Orkut and many vertical search features Google has. That's quite a load of information if you ask me. Google's contenders, on the other hand, buy information from Internet service providers, so their data may be even more accurate.
Ad Planner is only available in English (at the moment).
Ad Planner is integrated with Adwords.
You can export your media plan in .csv format.
Google Ad Planner and Google Trends for Websites are related.
Google Ad Planner data is estimated, based on an automated analysis of millions of search queries and site visits.
Data covers a 30-day period. You cannot see metrics past 30 days.
Not all websites are included in Ad Planner. Sites must meet minimum traffic criteria and certain quality guidelines.
Ad Planner includes sites from Google content network and independent websites that use other advertising platforms.
Next: Ad Planner Step By Step >>
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