The search giant Google announced the beta of its FREE advertising planning tool for advertising companies that will simply crush the likes of Nielsen Netratings and ComScore (whose share price dropped 20% on this announcement) and sent executives panicking for a response.
“As we understand it, Google is getting data through the Google Toolbar; if they are, it may not be easy for other companies to replicate such a large install base,” says Sandeep Aggarwal, a Collins Stewart analyst.
Yahoo are also about to follow with their own platform, however they do not have the same traffic measurement as Google.
I have always stated that Nielsen’s Netrating is floored for one simple reason, you have to pay big dollars to be included in their rankings, which excludes 99% of all websites.
As an example Nielsen Netratings ranks many of Australia’s biggest websites. In the real estate field there are only a handful (let’s say 10) of real estate websites that pay to Nielson to have their websites ranked (place code in their websites).
So, number 10 in real estate may only get 1 visitor per month but can claim to be in the top 10 real estate websites in Australia from the source ‘Nielsen Netratings’.
I have always argued that Nelson will never be taken seriously unless they rank all websites. It seems Nielson have taken their eye off the ball and thought that the cosy money coming in will just stay the same forever.
Many large companies are now worried about every move Google makes, Google want anything to do with popular information online, they give it away for FREE in the hope that people will spend more money on online advertising with them.
Google’s Ad Planner
2 Comments
Glen Barnes
Coming from an ex Nielsen//NetRatings (note spelling 😉 background I think your argument has some merit but there are a few issues. Page tagging is the ONLY way to get reliable data for small sites which is why Market Intelligence only measures those sites that sign up.
The question is will Google Ad Planner include the small sites in the reports? IF they use the full Google Analytics Opt-In data then there is no reason the can’t do so. Also where is the demographics data coming from and again how accurate is this on small sites? This can be worked around if they allow sites to run their own surveys like Crowd Science.
I agree that Nielsen need to up their game and need to start providing better insights to remain competitive but I don’t know if Google Ad Planner is the killer tool just yet.
Peter Ricci
What it does Glenn, is open up the playing field and will for once make Nielsen (note spelling 🙂 and others ) lift their game, reduce pricing and allow small sites to become part of their analysis.
Again , competition is the only way everyone can benefit no matter what industry we are talking about.