Google has soft launched Google Ad Manager, an ad tool that allows publishers to manage ad placement on their sites.
The service primarily competes with OpenX (previously PHPAds then OpenAds). Users add their ad codes to Google Ad Manager then include the Ad Manager generated code on their sites. The service then tracks the page views and CTR on each ad unit, complete with statistics and the ability to geotarget or other break downs on each unit. Google Ad Manager also supports locally sold ads, for example Ad Manager like OpenAds supports direct sale advertising as well.
The key for Google is that Google Ad Manager offers Adsense units for fallback and remnant site inventory. The service supports formats including graphical display, video and text ads.
What isn’t immediately clear is whether the service can link into third party sites and provide dollar returns natively. The FAQ for the service says only that users can “Easily track ads from a third-party network, affiliate provider, or other URL you provide” and screenshots show dollar figures. If it does link in to third party providers for financial tracking, the service will also compete with startups like TechCrunch40 finalist Pubmatic.
OpenX is due to launch a hosted solution later this year, but despite $5 million in funding will find the market tough now the Google Borg has now entered the space. In terms of Google, the service looks appealing and when it eventually opens up will no doubt find a willing user base. It’s yet another example of Google knowing no bounds in its quest to know everything about every person and site.
(via WSJ, thx to Razvan Antonescu for the tip)
google is taking over the world i swear! anybody else think 440 stock is a good deal?
kelsey
http://www.helpuu.com – the google-powered search engine that helps
I am not much in to Ad or SEO etc, but seems like people will try it (as its free, simple and easy !)
-Raxit
http://www.mykavita.com
Hope that people will understand that it is time to say yes to our privacy and no to Google.
The TV business works for more than 50yrs without knowing too much about us. The advertiser only knew that we watch a certain show (Let’s say they knew we watch ‘Friends’ which might mean they can target a new coffee shop in a certain location). They didn’t know what in which shows I looked 3 hours ago or two weeks ago. Getting the info for free doesn’t mean we need to give out our privacy.
Google is pushing our limits more and more everyday and “1984″ Orwell is getting closer everyday. But instead of communism, we have the corporate who become more and more intrusive.
Ads works before Google on TV and will work after it…
I’m waiting for a government or NGO that will show to the user what they expose to Google everyday. It probably will have the same effect as Beacon has in FB…
Stop Google civil surveillance today!!!!
isnt this an version of the “manage ads” tool that was already in the adsense dashboard?
looks like another example that one needs not only have a first mover advantage to compete head-to-head with google but also maintain technological lead to stay in business.
@#4 > no, “Manage Ads” in adsense is for adsense ads only. The point of this new tool is to let publishers manage ad zones on their site that can display any kind of ad. So for example if I use this I can set a header ad zone which shows my premium ad banner (which might be a traditional PPC banner that I sell directly to advertisers) and then when the clicks are used up on that it will revert automatically to use google adsense.
Openx is a phenomenally useful application that I think is let down by a clumsy interface (but to be fair, all the potential relationships between ads, campaigns, advertisers and publishers is not an easy interface to map out). Hopefully Google, with their experience in already providing a competent campaign management tool in Adwords can come up with something better. Also, for ad networks that use Openx (or an equivalent) to manage ads across multiple sites, it means they can outsource all of this traffic to google – which is one less thing to think of when scaling up your ad serving solution.
Duncan > why are you linking to WSJ? Direct link to Google Ad Manager:
https://www.goo...n_US/index.html
This is interesting, although it remains to be seen at what level then enter the market. The high-end players all offer incredibly sophisticated tools, particularly around partner revenue sharing, which is difficult to offer in a ’simplified’ format.
This may not be suitable for the big media players but aimed at the smaller networks, similar to the Analytics product, which does 90% of what most companies need pretty well.
Evil as in Google
Everytime I hear about Google acquiring this or launching that, I like Google a bit less. It’s just not a sane situation to give that much power to 1 company.
Can somebody please stop Google from doing just EVERTHING, please?
PLEASE… ?!
What are we going to do today brin?
today, we are going to take over the world!!
It is good service if you serve lots of ads and want to menage them ,sell some ads, switch between ads dynamically, set percentage for ads etc. Because you do not want to spend on another service for serving high volume ad requests.
It is good only if google will NOT use any of your data (click rate, number of ads server etc. ) for their own purposes.
I was initially rather dis-heartened to read this (I’m the author of a small ad management tool, focused on wordpress), but it actually could be a good thing for us “small timers” who focus on particular niches within ad management (and beyond).
As a few of the comments above have already intimated, there are a number of people who will hear the message that Google is in the ad management game, and immediately dislike that fact. However, they may then start shopping around for alternatives.
Not sure I’d be so thrilled about launching an OpenX hosted solution now though.
Being an active affiliate marketer, my jaw just dropped when I read this – the “GEO Targeting” feature is amazing. This feature alone can really increase the CTR and eventually ROI on advertising on a site.
Any merchant that I use right now that allows geotargeting has always seen better results, now basically Google is saying that I can use THEM to do my geotargeting so even for merchants/companies that don’t allow it – I can do this myself.
Brilliant.
But, I have to say – this tied in with Google Analytics that we all use, is there anything that Google DOESN’T know about our sites?!
MysteryCEO
just to add:
one other benefit of the google-hosted system is that you’ll inherit google’s anti click-fraud measures. whilst they have come under a certain amount of fire recently, it’s a safe assumption that google will always deal with click-fraud better than a downloadable app such as openx not only as google themselves rely on these measures as a cornerstone of their own ad-serving business, but also since it’s a hosted system they can update and improve the measures incrementally (and invisibly) whereas with Openx or other self-hosted solution you would need to download the new version of the app, upload and update it to reap any benefit in improved functionality.
brilliant business move. i wonder what’s next? are they going to buy into everything?
The good news for OpenX & PubMatic is that the attention that GOOG is bringing to the Ad Management space will almost certainly bring some tasty offers from GOOG competitors (MSFT, YHOO, etc.) interested in keeping up with the evolution of ad serving technology.
I’ve been using OpenX (aka “phpAdsNew”; aka “OpenAds”) for 6 years. When I read this story, I jumped. This is what we have been waiting for. THANK YOU GOOGLE!
I am going to switch, and I hope Google can add some stability to my life. OpenX is like a leaky submarine. You plug one hole, and another leak begins to splurge water into your sinking ship. OpenX developers are brilliant people, but TC reports OpenX has recv’d $20 mil? Gosh, has any of it been spent yet? OpenX hasn’t changed much in years.
Perhaps then OpenX’s swanky new AOL Exec only just recently found a nipple on that 20 mil. If so, they’ve got their work cut out for them:
– OpenX can’t recognize spiders (a Spider is simply anybody who clicks n ads more than n times in n minutes). Google seems to have this down.
- OpenX doesn’t let you clean up after a spider has run amok! Your data is trashed. Delicate relationships with dozens of advertisers are ruined.
- OpenX “zone chaining” crashes – zone chaining is the fundamental means behind OpenX’s limited ability to serve contextual ads.
- OpenX is not by itself contextual — you’ve got to make it contextual. It’s possible, but it’s not easy. And shaky, because of that zone chaining glitch.
- OpenX documentation is sparse. A documentation snafu cost me three weeks as it set me down the wrong path for using keywords last year.
- OpenX is SLOW. Click a button, wait…….
- OpenX is buggy. As an OpenX user with traffic of 1M+, I can report about a bug a week since the release of 2.3/2.4 which cause problems of some magnitude and waste our time. Last week it was a DB glitch. The week before that it was some sort of euro/american decimal bug. This week it is zone chaining. EVERY WEEK IT IS SOMETHING.
- OpenX advertiser reports and interfaces are not customer-friendly enough. The reports are buggy (open a report in MS excel, and adviews, adclicks, and CTR are ALL THE WAY TO RIGHT after 25 columns of empty cells of unused vars; oops, then you see a euro/american decimal bug has made your CTR 8,400% and the start date is 1970!!) so, EACH REPORT HAS TO BE CLEANED UP MANUALLY before being sent to the customer. Have more than 15 customers and you seen how this can be a problem. Furthermore, the OpenX web-based customer login is too simply to confusing and convoluted to be released to customers.
My hats off to OpenX developers, they have done amazing work. I’ll be back when they’ve spent some of that cash and released OpenX 3.0.
Why no google crunchbase entry?
Hi -
OpenX view of the announcement is here:
http://blog.ope...erving-be-open/
Scott Switzer
OpenX Community Leader
If it makes me more money I’m happy, but honestly sounds like smoke and mirrors to me. Google can’t compete with itself. Doesn’t make much sense, why Google would want advertisers to bypass the Adsense system. Adsense is basically an ad rotation, why rotate a rotation in the rotation? Not a very elegant solution, IMO. They should just improve Adsense and give us a better cut of the money, then we wouldn’t need to sell/rotate our own ads. If Adsense isn’t competitive, just make it competitive and be done with it.
I’m a bit worried about this solution, particularly because I’m not the biggest fan of Google Analytics. GA underreports the hell out of my traffic compared to server logs. I can’t have it underreporting impressions on CPM based ad placements.
Looks like OpenX are toast once google start pushing this out to the masses.
I don’t know about you guys but Google Ad Manager IS everything that I’ve been waiting for. I have some screen shots on my blog if you guys want to take a look. I posted there also a link where anyone can apply to be a beta tester. You should give it a try.
I’m not sure if I can post a link in here. If I can’t please remove it.
http://www.mone...web-publishers/
#23, maybe you got lots of bot hits
I don’t like GA either, it’s 1000x more information than I want, which slows me down, I code my own stats to tell me exactly what I need to know.
Google may under-report real users a little bit because it only works if the user has javascript enabled. But if your difference is significant compared to your logs, I’m sorry to tell you man you are thinking your traffic is better than it is. I used to be in the same boat… until I realized about 30% of my traffic is bots, which google analytics doesn’t count again because they don’t support javascript. The sooner you realize your real traffic numbers the better. Reality check time.
Anyway… I am using phpAdsNew (haven’t updated to OpenAds or OpenX) and I am very much looking forward to outsourcing this to Google Ad Manager. Then I don’t have to worry about upgrading (not that i do obviously, but I should) or scaling for traffic. In fact I’ll get to save the money i’m paying for that dedicated ad server!!!
Thanks Google!!!
- A happy user of Gmail, Analytics, AdSense, and AdWords
I love the ad manage tool. It makes life a lot easier.
Google’s announcement of its free ad server is interesting but not entirely new for the market. Free ad servers have been around for some time now, including OpenAds and Expo9 from Exponential Interactive (the company behind Tribal Fusion).
From PubMatic’s perspective:
- Google Ad Manager, like all ad servers, is complementary to PubMatic. Many publishers who use PubMatic do so in conjunction with their ad server, such as DoubleClick’s DART for Publishers, Atlas, or Zedo. The ad server is typically used to manage direct-sell campaigns while PubMatic is used to optimize across the publisher’s ad network relationships.
- While Google Ad Manager integrates AdSense, the leading solution for cross ad network revenue optimization remains PubMatic. PubMatic is working with multiple publishers who are already using Google Ad Manager. These publishers manage direct-sell campaigns with their Ad Manager ad server and drive increased revenue from the rest of their inventory by letting PubMatic automate and optimize ad serving decisions for them.
- Publishers should be wary of utilizing the same vendor for both ad serving infrastructure as well as an ad network. Combining the two represents a significant conflict of interest, which can disadvantage the publisher with respect to monetization.
For more on our view of the announcement, please see our blog here: http://www.pubm....com/blog/?p=16
Startups are not afraid of Microsoft, but they are afraid of Google. They know too much and now compete with everyone. It’s just a matter of time before they make serious mistakes and become just another Microsoft.
I’ve just recently found Openx (via Google) and have already setup a demo system. Easy work. It fits in with what our clients need.
Like others, I find Google’s recent moves a concern. I’m a big fan of Google in so many areas, but at the same time never have ‘all my eggs in one basket’. For example I used to use their analytics, but have now switched to http://www.getclicky.com which although not free, is much better. It’s important that web developers support the smaller innovative organizations, open source or commercial-based, especially when they have a superior product and customer service attitude.
I think it will always be true that the large companies like Google can bring in a great total package, but inevitably tend to loose focus at some point. I would hate Google to go the way of Microsoft in business practices or plain arrogance.
I’ve used openx before and I saw this. but my biggest question was whether or not this would take a second cut out of the adsense cut. or if the adsense revenue would stay the same.
>Anthony, #23,
You must be jooking. Please say you are jooking?
You can’t use your server logs for shit.
Google analytics are more trustable then your server logs will ever be.
I’m looking forward to see what Google can present. After all, they have brought us Adsense. I now earn more with fallback traffic then ever before.
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After using this a while, some observations:
Mystery CEO is right geotargeting, as well as delivery options, are nice.
Randy is right: OpenAds/OpenX is infuriating at times.
But this new thing from Google is equally or more infuriating in other ways. Hopefully they’ll get better fast, as Google Reader did (but other Google services haven’t).
Supposedly Ad Manager is for the small guys (with the Doubleclick system for large publishers). But still, the whole metaphor is around Orders and Slots/Zones, not Advertisers and Slots/Zones. This is very unfriendly for small publishers. It assumes you have ad sales staff, an ad sales manager, and all these roles. You have to fill in a lot of meaningless information. You can’t just upload a creative and then use it in different place: it is order-specific, not advertiser-specific. You can’t see what ads are showing in a slot. You can’t see all the ads from an advertiser.
This is a Goggle “beta” that really is a beta.
On the plus side, it’s great to get this crap off your server. Our ad httpd logs were bigger than our normal access logs. It really puts a load on the server, and we’re small enough we don’t want to pay for another server just for ads.
Nice comment Mike. I was wondering how this played in with the DoubleClick acquisition and whether the new google product was help to the little guy. Sounds like the answer is it is a pain now (hopefully to be improved) but it’s nice to have a place to essentially host and manage marketing creatives.
This is a Goggle “beta” that really is a beta.
good
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I’ll certainly give it a try and would love to offload the processing to The Big G.
I am trying to use Google Ad Manager in my blog
I will give it a try as well.
Good Work from Google once again.
I wonder what’s next from Google..
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google top everynoday else!
can be will see about google take the game
lol about it
i also wonder what next from google might be
google will take the game if thay let things free
and work like the do now
google is the best future solution in that case.
google is the best!
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