On June 24, the search giant Google, who boasts 70% of all internet searches announced its plan to launch the Google Ad Planner. The Ad Planner is geared to media buyers and designed to provide an “easy” way for advertisers to identify which sites to buy online ads on by telling them which sites their target audience visits. The tool provides specific filters such as age, gender, education, house hold income, information on a site’s reach, unique visitors, and list of keywords that visitors used in the search.

In its beta format the Google Ad Planner appears quick and simple to use. You just create a campaign and click on “research” to get your results. Instantly a list of target sites pop up. The sites in the list show the category, competition index, unique visitors, country, reach, pages views, ad format accepted and impressions a day. Its all very straight forward – except for one thing. Some of the sites are a little odd.

Google site categories are determined  from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in external consumer panel data and other third party market research.

Entering the measurement field with the likes of Comscore, Hitwise and Nielsen Online who also provide similar online demographic and traffic measurement is no easy feat. While Comscore and Nielsen use panels and web users to collect data and Hitwise takes more of the network approach collecting data from ISP networks – all these companies provide much more robust analytical products and services.

The Google Ad Planner is an interesting tool that attempts to categorize online spend for advertisers from a technology and traffic perspective. As we move to web 3.0 and the search industry matures, metrics will be needed to provide advertisers, hungry for ROI, with better information on the makeup and intent of visitors.