Crowd Science rocks!

February 24, 2009 By 3 Comments

Crowd Science
Crowd Science is extremely interesting company that enables publishers / bloggers to survey their readership. More specifically, identify your blogging audience. I was browsing my blogroll and a survey popped up on the home page. Being the curious type, I explored the first series of questions and realized it was dissecting me by demographic. I referenced the url in the browser and found it was Crowd Science….a super cool and free (for basic) demographic survey web service. From the company’s website:

Crowd Science Demographics is a new analytics service that builds detailed reports on the demographics and attitudes of website audiences.
By surveying a small number visitors with carefully constructed questionnaires, Crowd Science Demographics is able to build comprehensive profiles that give publishers a deep understanding of their audience.

If you haven’t guessed by now, this equals $$$ for you the publisher/blogger. The better understanding you have of your audience the better you can convey your niche audience to advertisers. This is not only a cool startup, but a truly value added service to the content publishing and blogging community.

Filed Under: Social Advertising Tagged With: , ,

Google’s Ad planner service

July 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Google Ad Planner service fleshes out the suite of web analytic tools and does so at a great price — free. On June 24, big “G” announced Ad planner as new service aimed at media planners. The service will allow media planners to find target audiences easily based on demographic information, site traffic and other metrics. According to emarketer the ad planning service can be even more granular with filters for age, gender education and household income.

I find it interesting that several months ago I was prompted in my Google account with the following message:

google ad planner

I keep clicking the “remind me later” tab until I can figure out what the data will be used for. Clearly the data is being digested by Google’s new ad planner. As with all of Google’s services the amazing feature rich applications always come with the cost of privacy.

The service has launched free and will continue to build a test audience to further deploy the ad planner. It will likely be a free service for the long haul with subscription fees for more robust features.

It’s interesting to point out that Google is throwing its’ weight directly against long-time analytic competitors like Hitwise, Comscore and Nielsen Online. The Experian purchase of Hitwise for $250 million is looking pretty expensive with Google’s recent ad planner news.

Google continues to trump the advertising market and expanding into analytics is only one of many services the business will release. The current market share says it all:

Google ad planner

In conclusion, Ad Planner appears to be an amazing service and should be a boon for the little guy and small businesses. Google proves once again, it will provide the tools neccessary for people to garner information and you certainly can’t be the price – FREE.

“Google’s deep pockets allow the company to create free offerings, such as Ad Planner, as a useful come-on to marketers to gain their ad business,” said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer. “However, continued uncertainty about which company’s Web measurements are most accurate could get exacerbated—or clarified—by another analytics service.”

If anyone has used Google’s new ad planner service, please leave comments on your findings.

Filed Under: Advertising Tagged With: , ,