Ad Planner advises companies on how to spend their ad budgets
Grant Surridge
Sun
TORONTO — Google Inc. became one of the world’s most famous companies by helping people find what they want on the Internet as quickly as possible.
Now the tech giant is poised to do the same for advertisers.
Google unveiled the details of its Ad Planner service this week in New York, with some observers saying it has the potential to revolutionize how companies spend their online advertising budgets and rival established web-traffic measuring companies like ComScore Inc. and Nielsen Online.
“One of the barriers, no question, has been the lack of bulletproof measurements,” said Toronto-based technology consultant Kaan Yigit. He referred to the skepticism about the accuracy of established web-traffic-measuring companies that has held back online advertising spending.
But there are also a myriad of explosive issues surrounding Ad Planner and a company that is already the destination for so many online-advertising dollars.
Foremost is Google becoming involved in advising companies on how to spend those advertising budgets.
“Once you control a whole lot of money, and then you try to control how the rest of it is spent, in effect that could be seen as restraint of trade,” said Rob Enderle, president of market research firm Enderle Group in California.
Representatives from Google declined to be interviewed.
Google’s new service will differ from competitors like ComScore and Nielsen in that it will use automated web servers to track the way people surf the Internet. Existing services largely rely on what is called panel tracking. In much the same way as TV ratings are compiled, a sample of web users volunteer to have their online habits tracked over a period of time.
The accuracy of panel tracking has been questioned in several quarters, as some believe that people self-censor their Internet habits when they are being watched.
The biggest advantage server-based measurement would have is that it would allow for more in-depth measurement, and potentially provide more accurate information about the viewing statistics for smaller sites with less traffic.
Armed with such information, Google could then create plans for companies to best optimize their online-advertising dollars.
For example, a company may elect to advertise with a host of smaller sites instead of just one large one, because it would better target their demographic.
Another factor working against Ad Planner is that because Google collects so much of its revenue from advertising, companies may believe the new service is biased, said Enderle.
He said the Internet giant may be better off positioning the service as an arms-length company and believes this will force Google to strive for a transparent means of showing how the data is collected.
© The Vancouver Province 2008