Ad Planner enables advertisers to identify and select sites which have content that is relevant to the products and services they are promoting.
Publishers can create a profile of their site to attract advertisers. They can provide background information, choose categories, list the ad types they display and optionally share Google Analytics data.
Advertisers can then search these site profiles and select where they want to show their ads.
Is This Really A Big Deal?
This new service has the potential to fundamentally change online advertising. To understand how we need to take a look at how online advertising has evolved.
In the early days of online advertising big companies would ask their agencies to allocate a percentage of their budget to the Internet. The large agencies had little understanding of the Internet so gravitated towards the biggest sites where they could buy page views in volume. Little attention was paid to where and how the ads appeared.
The big sites started to create more content against which they could diaplay the ads. They also started to categorize the content and charge a premium for placing ads within specific categories. Advertisers started to see the advantage of targeting their audience.
As the inventory in the most popular categories started to run out or reach premiums that were perceived as being too high, many advertisers started to look for additional sites on which to advertise. However the cost of identifying sites and negotiating deals meant they had to stay focused on sites with big audiences. It was not cost effective for them to target smaller niche sites even if they had very high quality and relevant audiences.
Google Ad Planner changes this.
It allows all advertisers to easily identify and select niche sites on which to show their ads without the hassle of negotiating deals. The niche sites should result in higher conversion rates and improved ROI, which in turn should encourage advertisers to focus on finding more of these properties.
Niche websites with quality content and loyal audiences will become more desirable than large websites with undifferentiated content.
This is a fundamental shift.
The advertising revenues will move down the long tail from the Yahoos and AOL's of this world to the high quality niche sites and blogs.
It will take time for this change to happen, but the evolution is inevitable because online advertising is so transparent, marketing money will always flow to the activities which provide the greatest return.
The future looks bright for the millions of quality niche sites which make up the majority of web publishing.
TalkContent is a site for those that are passionate about creating content. Whether you're a blogger, a website owner or a large online magazine publisher, this is the site for you.
