Q&A: Does Google's Ad Planner Change the Game?

This week, I’ll be asking  some of the big questions I have about the advertising industry to people who have skin in the game.

BNET: Does Google’s Ad Planner mean that ComScore or Nielsen will lose business?

Dave Martin, Vice President of Interactive Media, Ignited: Not yet. Their data is still in the nascent stage. They will need to continue to populate their database with more categories, sites and behaviors before they’ll be a threat to ComScore or Nielsen. Their one advantage is that they are free, but most mid-size to large agencies (who command most of the ad dollars) will prefer to pay for better data than to get inaccurate or incomplete data for free.

Jay Kulkarni, CEO, Theorem: At the low end of media budget’s Ad Planner will definitely take business away from ComScore. That being said, ComScore is used by media properties that have significant spends and there is little overlap.

Yevgeniy Gutsalo, Marketing Manager, Corporate Suites: Ad Planner was released advance Google’s content network, which now includes selected placement, to allow you to target specific websites. Google hopes that Ad Planner will help people find these websites easier. It is going to take more business out of Yahoo content network and general search engine. Yahoo has actually taken a step back by allowing anyone to place a search box on their website with Yahoo and then share revenue on clicks, and then call these their partners. So Google is moving a step forward, and responding to click fraud and problems advertisers were facing in terms of targeting the right sites for the best ROI.