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)

1. 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)

1. Inability to sort between ad supported and non-ad supported sites.  Boo.
2. Ad supported sites are only designated as ad supported if they are in the Google content network.
3. 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

1. 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.
2. 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..