Travel Trends: Google AdPlanner & Quantcast

Google AdPlanner - In another sign that Google is going to just take over every fathomable task in my life, the giant recently unveiled a new ad-planning tool for agencies and marketers. AdPlanner, is designed to help agencies identify sites where their target audience might be active. While it uses audience measurement data (from Nielsen), AdPlanner also combines it with search engine data and information from third parties, to determine with more precision what sites attract a certain demographic audience. Via a simple interface, buyers can enter basic demographic target information and potential sites to buy into Ad Planner, and then can quickly generate a potential media plan. The product also calculates the plan’s total estimated reach.
http://www.nytimes.com/

Quantcast - Those of you reading this blog know how obsessed Troy and I are about measurement and analytics and inconsistency that's rampant between what the various measurement tools out there. Qantcast recently announced a plan to hopefully "reconcile the difference" between what publishers say their traffic is (using Google Analytics, Omniture etc.) versus what Nielsen and ComScore report out (using online panels). The new mechanism will offer "people-based traffic counts" for sites registered with Quantcast, basically a "a hybrid of panel-based data and cookie-based measurement", using a formula to account for the inconsistencies from cookies.
http://adage.com/digital/