Search Engine Optimization

Google Ad Planner Review

Last week Google Launched new service Google Ad Planner.

Google Ad Planner is a free media planning tool that can help you identify websites your audience is likely to visit so you can make better-informed advertising decisions. – Google

Ad Planner is designed for online advertisers engaged in impression ads, banners and contextual ads. Ad Planner includes both Google partners and non-partners.

Google Ad Planner Options:

You can select websites in over 50 countries and filter results by:

• Gender
• Age – categories: 0-17, 18 -24, 25 – 34, 35 – 44, 45 – 54, 55- 64.
• Education – categories: No high school, high school, some college, bachelors, graduate.
• Household Income – categories: $0 – $24,999, $25,000 – $49,999, $50,000 – $74,999, $75,000 – $99,999, $100,000 – $149,999, $150,000 or more.
• Countries – there are over 50 countries to choose from.
• Language

You can also filter results by media type:

• Text – 728×90 Leader board,120 x 600 Skyscraper
• Image – 336 x 280 Large Rectangle, 468×60 Banner
• Video – 300×250 Inline Rectangle, 250×250 Square
• Rich Media 160×600 Wide Skyscraper, 200×200 Small Square

Media type and ad formats only apply to Google Content Network.

Google Ad Planner provides site metrics such as:

• Site Name
• Category – social networks, merchants, ISPs, movie rentals, cable/satellite providers, banking and many more.
• Comp Index – A numeric score assigned to every site displayed in Google Ad Planner. The composition index shows how concentrated your audience is on a specific site relative to internet users within the country you have specified. For example, if you’ve defined your audience as ‘males,’ a site with a composition index of 212 means that you’re approximately twice as likely to find a male user on this site relative to finding males across the internet within the country you’ve specified. The composition index is calculated by dividing the site’s reach into the audience by the percent reach into the audience on the internet within the country you’ve specified.
• Unique Visitors – Estimated number of visitors from the country you specified
• Country Reach – The estimated percent of total internet users, from the country you’ve defined, that a specific site reaches.
• Page Views – The estimated number of times pages across a specific site have been accessed by visitors within the country you’ve defined.
• Impressions Per Day – The number of daily ad impressions available on a specific site in the Google content network(if available)

Website are presented in list fashion. You can click on website URL and visit it in a new window. If you are satisfied with website metrics(page views, unique visitors, etc.) and like its content, you can put a check mark next to it. Select as many sites as you wish and press ..

Once through, go to “Media Plan” tab and review what you have. Google will produce cool graphs:

Ad Planner will also supply you with Summary Data of the media plan.

You can export Media Plan as a .csv file for Microsoft Excel.

Quality and Review

Ad Planner is a breeze if you got a campaign on your hands. Google doesn’t limit websites to its content network and lets you see all websites that meet Ad Planner guidelines. Guidelines are:

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Sites might not appear in Google Ad Planner for a variety of reasons. For example, a site might not appear if it:

• Has a traffic volume below a minimum threshold.
• Used a robots.txt exclusion file to prevent indexing by Google.
• Doesn’t adhere to our quality guidelines.

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Google does all demographic research for you, all you have to do is select websites you want your ads to appear on.

Right now Ad Planner is very limited in counties other than US. If you select Canada and apply demographic filters, website lists shrink to 10-30 websites!

Sometimes you will see websites that have no advertisements at all so you will have to persuade webmasters and negotiate ad placement.

Ad Planner is perfect if you have banner or branding campaigns. Number of websites is immense and Google does a good job with demographic judgment.

Google is not first to come up with this tool. Current leaders are:

• Quantcast
• Nielsen Online
• comScore
• Microsoft

All services are fee based, unlike the Ad Planner.

It’s not likely to pose a threat to these services, since marketers prefer to get data from various sources, but it’s an addition to the toolset.

Right now Ad Planner is by request only. You can apply here.