Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Google Ad Planner - I now have access


In late June I wrote about the launch of Google’s Ad Planner. I registered with Google and today my access to the media planning tool arrived. I could spend hours playing with it...what a sad old sod!

Without applying any filters it shows the details of sites that account for 240 million unique visitors (for the US).

Applying the filters to only show me sites that have high numbers of the over-55s it reduces it to 70 million.

If I apply the filter to only show me UK sites reduces the figure to 33k (yes that is 33,000). This will be the subject of another blog posting. Sticking with the US.

The above chart shows the sites sorted by Composition Index. I expect you are going to hear a lot more about this term so this is how Google defines it

The composition index shows how concentrated your audience is on a specific site relative to internet users within the country you have specified. For example, if you've defined your audience as '55+' a site with a composition index of 212 means that you're approximately twice as likely to find a 55+ user on this site relative to the 55+ across the internet within the country you've specified. The composition index is calculated by dividing the site's reach into the audience by the percent reach into the audience on the internet within the country you've specified.

I have marked to sites for special interest - jacquielawson.com is a UK cottage industry (literally) that produces (in my view) the best online greeting cards – famed for the owner’s dog Chudleigh.

The other site is a little US organisation called AARP. Look at the figures for unique users and page views. I am staggered. Anybody from AARP like to explain? Dick Stroud

4 comments:

Martijn de Haas said...

Mr. Stroud, thanks for pointing Google AdPlanner out to us and we too have now got access to the data.
We have looked at some sites in Holland of which I know the owners and tried to verify the figures with them. They all claim that the figures of Google are not in line with their own figures. In most of the cases they use Google Analytics to keep track and they say that Google AdPlanner numbers should be 3 to 5 times higher.
I wonder if you have similar experiences in the UK and what your opinion on this matter is.
Is Google wrong and do we need to wait until it is out of the Beta-stage or could it be that published figures are wrong?

Regards,

Martijn de Haas

DickStroud said...

I think everybody is baffled where Google is getting its data. This is an excellent article in Tech Crunch that explains what is going on.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/24/is-google-ad-planner-getting-its-data-from-the-google-toolbar/

Anonymous said...

For an alternative to Jacquie Lawson's ecards, you can check out the artistic animated ecards from Ojolie.com.

Tim

Corie Hawks said...

I know this is late, but I thought I could offer a little help on the subject of AARP-
In the United States, AARP is the largest senior advocacy organization and maintains around 50% penetration of the population through memberships. They offer discounts in travel and medicare, legal and financial help, and have the most-widely distributed magazine in the country. It did not surprise me that they appeared on the list; they are an extremely large organization.
I have enjoyed the postings on your blog, thanks for your insights.