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The mission of DoubleClick Ad Planner, Google's free research and media planning tool formerly named Google Ad Planner , is to provide the deepest, most accurate insight into online audiences possible. This insight helps display advertisers select the best sites for their media plans and drive results for their campaigns. One of the many data points that DoubleClick Ad Planner provides is site traffic data. In line with Ad Planner's mission, we've improved how we estimate and share this data in order to provide media planners, buyers and researchers with improved data quality and more data visualization options. This builds upon the traffic improvements we made in January of 2009 and is part of our continuous effort to provide trusted insights into online audiences. This release includes the following two significant improvements: Traffic estimates across a number of metrics are now more accurate (Unique user and reach estimates remain the same) Direct measured traffic is now included for publishers who opt-ed in their Google Analytics data Upgrading Site Traffic Estimates To improve the quality of our site traffic estimates, we have upgraded our traffic estimation model. Our model uses a hybrid methodology that combines sample user data, from various Google products and services, with direct measured site-centric data. The model's direct measured signal is pulled from Google Analytics customer accounts that have chosen to opt-in to sharing their data with Ad Planner. This hybrid approach allows us to use direct measured data to train our traffic estimation models and produce the best estimate for any given site. For more information about how we use opt-in Google Analytics data check out our past blog posts on how Google Analytics data is used in Ad Planner and on replacing traffic estimates with direct measured Google Analytics data . This latest upgrade improves the accuracy of our estimates by over 10%. We look at a large amount of data and metrics to evaluate our estimates and are continuously working on improving them. We believe our model to be among the more accurate sources of traffic estimation in the industry. Publishers who would like to complement their site listing with direct measured data are welcome to do so by opt-ing in their Google Analytics data in DoubleClick Ad Planner Publisher Center . We invite publishers who are new to Ad Planner to learn more about using Publisher Center to manage their site profile . Providing Direct Measured Site Traffic Data In May 2009, we announced Ad Planner Publisher Center, which made it possible for publishers to opt-in their Google Analytics data to Ad Planner. We've now upgraded site profiles in Ad Planner to display this data in the worldwide charts for Daily Unique Visitors on site profile pages. For publishers who opted-in, their direct measured data is displayed as a solid line in their chart. For example, Gamezhero, a website offering free online games, opted-in their Google Analytics data in June. Here's what their worldwide chart for Daily Unique Visitors looks like now: (click here to view image) In the coming months, we plan to bring direct measured site traffic data to country-level profile views in addition to the worldwide profile views that are currently supported. Understanding the Data in Ad Planner To offer additional transparency into how Ad Planner generates its data, we've published a new help document about our methodology . The document provides more details behind how Ad Planner generates site traffic data, in addition to other data, such as demographics, ad information, categories and descriptions. Getting Started Give DoubleClick Ad Planner a try at www.google.com/adplanner . We think you'll find it to be a powerful research and media planning tool that makes it easy to find audiences and create well-informed media plans. Posted by Wayne Lin, Product Manager, DoubleClick Ad Planner [note: this post has been reprinted from the DoubleClick Blog ]

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Better Site Traffic Data in DoubleClick Ad Planner

The latest enhancements to Google Ad Planner and DoubleClick's DART for Advertisers (DFA) bring new ways to help streamline your online display advertising workflow. With the newly launched DFA Analytics beta and beta integration of Google Ad Planner into the DFA platform, you'll now have a singular, seamless portal for planning, executing, and measuring campaigns -- with just one login. This unified set of tools, all accessible through the DFA platform, bring more efficiency to the campaign management process, saving valuable time and resources.

Beyond access enhancements, both DFA Analytics and Ad Planner also provide you with more data and more ways to analyze it. We've summarized the changes to each product for quick reference below, but be sure to check out the official DoubleClick and Ad Planner blog posts for full details.

The new DFA Analytics beta helps you:

• Gain insights quickly. Interactive reports mean easier navigation through your accounts and data. You can model data in charts and graphs, as well as drill up and down through criteria such as advertiser, campaign, or targeting settings.
• Get your reports faster. Reports update frequently - every few hours - and the new user interface enables you to access your data quickly.
• Use new types of reports. Pull geographic delivery data. Additional reports show delivery data by bandwidth, browser, and operating system.

And Ad Planner's new capabilities now enable you to:

• View subdomain data. See data including traffic estimates and demographics for the largest ten subdomains of any top-level domain. Once you identify subdomains to add, you can do so easily in Ad Planner.
• See available ad placements while researching sites. You'll also be able to search for ad placements alongside domains on the "Search by audience" tab and see traffic and demographic estimates for each placement
• Visualize audience data easily. Quickly compare reach and relevancy of sites you select with a new interactive graph.
• Access more granular publisher data. With publishers now able to opt-in their Analytics data, you'll receive more accurate and specific information about their sites.
• Use Ad Planner within DoubleClick DFA. Log in to your DoubleClick DFA account to access Ad Planner and have one tool for campaign planning, trafficking, and measurement. (Note: This feature is rolling out to all users over the next couple weeks)

If you haven't yet tried Ad Planner, give it a go at www.google.com/adplanner. And for more information on DART for Advertisers, visit DoubleClick.com and fill out an inquiry form.

Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team