Google Ad Planner Needs Work
After about a week of waiting, I finally had a chance to demo the new Google Ad Planner tool. While I haven’t had much time to really play around with all of the detailed features, I have noticed a few salient qualities that are most certainly blog-worthy.
The Good (note: singular)
- Ad Planner, like many of Google’s tools, has a very clean and user friendly interface. The current Beta iteration is not a user friendly as Google Analytics, but it is significantly less cumbersome than many of their subscriber based competitors (ahem…Comscore…lookin’ at you here).
The Bads (note: plural)
- Inability to sort between ad supported and non-ad supported sites. Boo.
- Ad supported sites are only designated as ad supported if they are in the Google content network.
- Little to no exclosure about where the data comes from. Yes, we understand serach behavior is incorporate (duh.), BUT who is your 3rd party data provider.
The Funny
- When pulling certain demographic indexing, it becomes apparent how much Google data is skewed and influenced by click farms. For example, when searching for indexing for a male, age 18-34, you will notice a high volume of sites related to cricket and Indian news. Since most click farms are located in or around South East Asia, it is a logical assumption that the massive volume of click fraud may be influencing site indexing.
- It becomes quite apparent how popular porn truly is.
So that is that. I think the product has a lot of potential to be an excellent tool. Many media planners who I have spoken to really seem to like it. And, I am pretty excited to see what the next iteration looks like. Say tuned..
