Google Lures Advertisers With Audience Measurement Tool

Tag : Hands On Tools
Measuring the Internet usage tool may be the next free thingfrom Google, a service that augurs competition with companies thatcharge a hefty premium for such information.

Internet search leader Google Inc. is all set to offer advertisersa free service that measures Internet usage, which helps themidentify the best spots on the web to buy ads that will reach itstarget audience, a company spokesman said on Monday, posing achallenge to existing Web measurement firms.

Google’s overture is aimed at strengthening its ad-salesbusiness, could pose a major threat to the Web measurement servicesthat are available now, ad executives say. The new measurementtools, which will be provided to advertisers and their agencies forfree, will compete with the likes of services offered byestablished leaders Nielsen and ComScore, based on the notion thatthe more data ad customers have about their audiences, the morethey are likely to spend.

The spokesman said audience measurement attributes are the productof Google’s efforts to provide better media planning tools.He declined to give further details on the plans, which will beannounced in a company blog post on Tuesday.

While those services establish their assessments on selectivesurveys or customer panels, Google’s results would be basedon data collected from Web servers, providing a deeper and broaderpicture of Internet behavior, the newspaper reported.

This would make clear why Google’s partner, Publicis Group , reacted to news of Google’s ad deal with Yahoo with joyrather than apprehension. By giving away the new tool, Google couldattract more advertising business.

But with Google already commanding an increasing chunk ofadvertising real estate both online and off, some ad executives areleery about placing even more power in the company’s hands.“For an advertiser, the last thing you want to do is to haveyour adviser be the same person you are spending your moneywith,” says Sarah Fay, chief executive of Aegis NorthAmerica, the media-buying giant owned by Aegis Group of the U.K.

The news comes as Google’s announcement last week that Google Trends had launched a new service that allows users to type in specificdomains and compares basic traffic information about any .com site by means of nothing more than natural user searches. Alsoincorporated are every day traffic figures in users (sent fromGoogle search), where in the world the users are coming from, andany associated sites that were either searched for or visited inthat same session.

ComScore shares fell $1.69, or 6.1 percent, to $26 in extendedtrading immediately following news of Google’s planned mediameasurement service. Nielsen Media is a unit of Nielsen Co, whichis owned by a collection of top private equity firms.