• June 25, 2008

Google's research and media planning tool, dubbed Ad Planner, was "designed with media planners in mind," according to the Inside AdWords blog.

The tool, which is currently available by invitation only, is aimed at helping media planners discover both large and small sites that are relevant to and frequented by their target audience. Users enter their target audience's demographics and sites they'd typically visit, and then Ad Planner trolls data from sites around the Web to return matches.

Ad Planner can plug the info into a comma separated values (CSV) file, which can be ported to a spreadsheet (and the ensuing media plan). The document can also be exported to DoubleClick's MediaVisor multi-platform campaign management tool. Interested parties can apply to be included in the beta at http://www.google.com/support/adplanner/bin/request.py?contact_type=signup, though they will need to have an existing Google account.

The search giant officially unveiled the tool at AM 3.0, the ARF's annual conference dedicated to audience measurement, though news leaked out in advance on Monday evening.

--Tameka Kee