Reach Machines » adplanner

June 24, 2008

Google’s AdPlanner and the Future of Online Media Buying

Filed under: media planning — Tags: adplanner, advertising, google, media buying, media planning, media research — bstraley @ 11:39 pm

The coverage of Google’s announcement of their AdPlanner application for media buyers has by and large buried the lede. The real story here is that Google is attempting to disintermediate “traditional” media planning from the management of online marketing campaigns. It is also integrating its own brand of audience measurement into the process thereby undermining the primary value proposition offered by the likes of comScore, NNR, Quantcast, and others. The online research and audience measurement companies have reason to be very, very concerned about this development. So too should the media teams of interactive agencies view this news with a reasonable degree of trepidation.

Another group of companies that should consider this move as a strategic threat are the ad networks. In making this move, it appears that Google has joined the team here at Reach Machines in the belief that the most efficient way to research and plan media is to take a platform and network agnostic view of the Web at the outset and utilize relevance, reach, and engagement data to identify the optimal online properties for specific ads and messages. Isn’t that precisely the ad network value proposition in a nut shell? They do the hard work of bundling the “best” sites into channels so the planners don’t have to? It is not a question of “if” but when Google announces the integration of ad buying with their AdPlanner tool. At that point, all bets are off as to what value all but the very largest ad networks can bring to the table.

For years, we’ve struggled on the client side to accept plans that on their face were too limited in scope and reflected the obvious. $1MM buys spread across four properties and maybe a network channel or two just don’t cut it anymore. In a world of ever more fragmented consumer attention and content, marketers not only want audience reach but also placements that are on message and offer an engaged userbase. Current planning tools, methodologies, and network buys (regardless of how “vertical ” they might be) simply don’t meet this fundamental requirement because they ignore these critical dimensions and instead steer marketers in the direction of targeting by demographics and psychographics. Those are poor proxies for consumer behavior and purchase intent. As a consequence, this methodology consistently underperforms compared to platforms and methodologies that target actual consumer behavior and purchase intent. Perhaps this is a big part of the reason why display campaigns rarely deliver the kinds of results savvy marketers expect and why marketers consistently flee to quality in the form of search campaigns and lead generation (where someone else owns the downside performance risk).

While Google’s approach to improving the efficiency of the media research and planning process makes a lot of strategic sense for the company (continuing to vertically integrate along the online advertising value chain), it does not go nearly far enough in moving the industry away from the antiquated approach of audience segmentation by poor proxies for consumer intent: demographics and psychographics. In this regard, the present incarnation of AdPlanner represents an evolution of the media research and planning process rather than the revolution that is required.

For more background and a review of AdPlanner, check out Danny Sullivan’s write-up over at Search Engine Land.

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