Google Ad Manager Service launched

Google Ad Manager Service launched

Search engine giant Google has announced the launch of their new Ad Manager Service which would enable web publishers to sell advertising faster and fill unsold slots on their sites.

The company said that they have been testing this service with some of their customers. It has been designed to streamline how ads are placed on Web sites and generate performance reports.

The service would be hosted on Google powered servers and the publishers would be able to access the features from a web based back-end.

Google said for unfilled spots available on their website, publishers would have the option to run Google’s AdSense powered ads.

Checkout: Google Ad Manager

Here are the comments on Google Ad Manager by OpenX:

1. Concerns publishers should have about AdManager

a. It’s only a hosted version – hard to customize, dependent on Google

b. Google gather user and revenue data

c. Google may charge in future for AdManager, and can cancel your account

d. Despite 1 year+ of testing, still only a beta, still only available in N America – how committed are Google to this product

2. How Google’s late entry Validates the OpenX model – The market recognizes the importance of offering small and medium sized publishers a free ad server.

a. OpenX has been providing this capability for 9+ years, and already has 30k+ publishers in over 100 countries using our software to deliver billions of ads daily.

b. As a result, OpenX has a much more solid understanding of the market.

3. Control – Independence and transparency is critical in this market. Publishers want control of their inventory and data.

a. Open X has been open source since day 1

b. OpenX is truly independent – not a publisher or ad network (unlike Google)

c. Publishers trust OpenX, and are concerned about sharing their user and revenue data with Google

4. Download and Hosted – Our research clearly shows that publishers want a choice of a download and hosted software version

a. Open X has offered download for 9+ years

b. Hosted version already live with key publishers – publishers from 60 countries on the waiting list

Comments from Ruben Buell, CEO of marketing technology company AdShuffle:

· Ad Manager is not a free product. “The data that Google can now collect from a site’s visitors far exceeds the cost of serving ads. It gives Google an even deeper, more informed view of customer information.”

· The integration will take longer and be a larger headache for Google than most expect. “I believe Google just wants to port all of DoubleClick’s information into its system, which is virtually impossible,” says Buell. “They are going to run into nightmares with that process.”

· There is a compatibility issue between Google Ad Manager and DoubleClick’s DART for Publishers. “Google Ad Manager uses a single identifier for all site tags, while DART uses multiple parameters that are constructed ad-hoc. These are two fundamentally different methodologies that will make it difficult for current Doubleclick customers to migrate to Ad Manager.”

· DoubleClick customers should be nervous about the future of the product they have used for so long. “If Ad Manager is built to improve on the ‘unreliable inventory forecasting’ that many publishers experience, how do you justify using older, less accurate techniques on your other product? I don’t think this necessarily means the death for DART in the short term, but it’s hard to picture DART in its current form being sold alongside Ad Manager.”

· This acquisition will not be all things to all people. “The largest search engine marketing firm just bought the largest display advertising technology provider, but the fact that Google is now promoting two competing offerings shows that Ad Manager and DoubleClick cannot coexist.

One final point from Buell, “Atlas’ (owned by Microsoft) publisher offering is also called AdManager.