LivLarge

Earlier today I attended an Intro to Google Ad Planner webinar.

If you haven’t heard about Ad Planner it’s an online media planning tool recently launched by Google that allows you to research sites to include in your online media buying plan. 

I’m super excited about this as it will greatly reduce the time it takes to create an onlne media campaign and will help agencies/advertisers select a broader range of websites in which to target their ideal audiences.  Best of all like other Google products it’s FREE.

Here’s a rundown of what was discussed today:

Ad Planner currently shows 30 days worth of data which is frequently updated (at least once a month), but doesn’t currently show when data was last refreshed.

Ad Planner allows you to:

• Research sites by demographic (age, sex, education, income) and online behaviour
• View detailed site data such as user demographics, other sites users visited, keywords searched to arrive at site.
• Compare selected sites and show aggregated data as to how many UV’s & Page Views you will reach as well as aggregated demographic data for users.
• Find the niche sites that fit well with your target demographic
• Find sites relevant to your audience if you have little understanding of where they surf online
• View sites on an international scale, millions of sites providing greater visibility over and above the top sites in your area
• Undertake site discovery & research within minutes
• Create an entire online media plan in minutes

 Some of the webinar Q & A session: 

Q. What is the difference between this & Comscore etc?  How does the technology work and what are the capabilities?

A. The focus of this tool is purely on media planning.  We’re opaque on source data but take a multi data approach using both internal and external data sources including demographic data from a leading audience measurement provider.

Q. Does the tool show all sites on the web or only Google Content Network sites?

A.  The tool covers any sites on the web that people spend time on not just Google content network sites.  Not all sites shown offer advertising but this is still useful for media plan research - can show related sites

Q. Who is the third party leading audience measurement company that you’re working with
A. Can’t say

Q. Are you using data from the Google Toolbar?
A.  We don’t discuss individual data sources.  But It would be hard for us to use this data without users full permission.

Limitations of the product:

•  Geo-targeting is currently only available at country level not state, region etc.
• You can’t do a direct media buy from Ad Planner even for Adwords, you have to export a csv file.  
• It doesn’t currently provide cost of media buy or type of ad formats available on the sites you’re interested in (does show ad formats for content network sites)
• Reach & frequency reports are currently unavailable but based on agency feedback they’re looking at introducing it at a later date.  

Big changes rolling out in the coming weeks

•  Ability to filter out sites that don’t show ads
•  Show reach and frequency for selected sites
• Category level data & filters
• Working on ways to reveal sub domain data as audiences can vary a lot on large sites

  Other features that may appear in future

• Ability to set up alerts for new sites that match your target
• They are exploring ways for Publishers to share data with them.  In future this may include information such as rate cards, ad formats etc.
• They aren’t currently accredited by the Media Ratings Council but may become accredited based on agency demand
• They’re hoping to be able to reduce friction between Adwords & Ad Planner to allow you to select content network sites and put them in a shopping basket for purchase.

My industry take on this is that it has the potential to shift a proportion of ad budgets away from the traditional top sites.  As it is a free tool it gives all agencies easy access to information on smaller sites that are likely to be better targeted to their audience.  Currently agencies don’t have the time or resources to research niche sites for small media buys. In saying that they would still have to contact small sites individually to negotiate and purchase the placement so I don’t think it will make a huge impact.

Last week the American Online Publishers Association revealed a four year analysis of its monthly Internet Activity Index showing that users are now spending over half of their time online visiting content.

Here’s the time split according to their study:
Content 47%
Communications 33%
Commerce 15%
Search 5%

The share of time spent on ecommerce has dropped 1% from 16% to 15% over the four years.

The continued transition of traditionally offline activities (reading the news, finding entertainment) is obviously driving the increase in time spent viewing content.

I wonder how they track social networking sites which are a mix of both content & communication.

While I’m not a big fan of flashing banners and over the page creative, the IAB UK site has some cool examples of what can be done with rich media campaigns.

I particularly like the cute Elf  in the Discover card campaign as he waits for you to interact with him rather than starting up without you wanting him to.   The campaign was successfully spread through viral marketing and won several awards.

The Golf GTI campaign may be ‘creative’ but the Crispin Porter execution shows just how frustrating slow downloads can be and probably prevented loads of people from getting the message in the ad.

A quick search didn’t produce any recent data on the animation vs static debate but I did find some studies from 2005:

An Eyetrack III study showed some interesting online advertising observations –
“Comparing static and animated ads instead revealed a mixed trend of some static outperforming animated ads and vice versa. Perhaps this relates back to prevailing user ‘banner blindness’ avoiding ads which are just that; ‘ads’.”

I also like observation 10 – “Small pop-ups are quickly viewed, then closed or hidden.”

This iMedia Connection case study discusses a static vs animated test with interesting results.

I also found that as far back as 2002 both Microsoft and Time Warner agreed to eliminate the majority of pop-up ads on their sites due to complaints from users. 

I’m sure there are probably many articles that show animation outperforming static ads however, the above examples may be useful when convincing your creative team that large n flashy banners aren’t always best! 

This all points back to ad relevance – I think integration and good placement are still the key to a great campaign.

Google has won the bid to purchase Doubleclick paying US$3.1 billion for the online ad management company.A late contender they competed against Yahoo, Microsoft & AOL for the deal.

Doubleclick’s vast network of publishers & advertisers will help Google’s launch into display and rich media advertising.Google generate the majority of their income from pay per click text ads. This deal will only increase their market lead and make them stronger than ever in the online ad space.

This is a clear loss for Microsoft. Search engine ads currently make up 40% of US online ad spend and with Microsoft’s share of search engine queries at only 15% the purchase of Doubleclick would have really boosted their capability in this area.

The search advertising market is now so efficient that it is hard for advertisers to increase their exposure without increasing their keyword spend to maximum levels. Display advertising inventory however is almost infinite and with the targeting and measurement tools available it’s extremely cost effective.

Brand advertisers are starting to take notice of this and if Google play the next steps right (which I‘m sure they will) they’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.