Google Ad Planner is now DoubleClick Ad Planner

Google Ad Planner is now renamed to DoubleClick Ad Planner. The product remains free and open for everyone and can continue to use Ad Planner regardless of whether or not you are a DoubleClick customer.

Google's DoubleClick products enable the end-to-end planning, buying, serving and measurement of display ads across the web. Since Ad Planner's media research and planning tools are a significant part of these it is brought under the DoubleClick brand.

URL still remails the same, you can visit Ad Planner at www.google.com/adplanner.

Analysis Tools in AdWords Campaigns Tab

Over the last several months, we've been introducing new ways to analyze and segment your campaign data. As we continue to introduce more data types, we want to make sure that it's easy for you to access these reporting controls. That's why we've introduced a new analysis toolbar in the Campaigns tab of your account. This toolbar consolidates key functionality from the "Filter and views" and "More actions" menus, and appears at the top of each of your data tables:







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You can use the toolbar to quickly apply a filter to the data you're viewing or customize the columns on each tab. You can also gain important insights into performance across different networks or time periods by using the "Segment" option:





Controls to show or hide paused or deleted campaigns and ad groups are also now available in this toolbar:



Just like the integration of the popular Search Query and Placement Performance Reports in the Campaigns tab, our hope is that this new toolbar will further streamline reporting and help you to get the most out of your AdWords data and your advertising campaigns.

Bid Ideas Now in the Opportunities Tab

Google has introduced a new feature for the Opportunities tab. All these days Opportunities tab provided keyword and budget ideas for optimizing your account. Now Google is adding more functionality by introducing Bid Ideas.

Bid Ideas are based on bid simulator data, customized bid ideas was a feature that was introduced to help the advertiser to determine the exact bid that would make most of the advertising budget and higher ROI.

Bid ideas are shown with their estimated cost, impression, and click impact. A graph showing clicks versus cost for a range of bid amounts pop up as soon as bid ideas are clicked. The graph will include your keyword's current bid (marked in gray) and the proposed bid (marked in yellow).

The estimates shown are not predictions or estimates but they are variations of last 7 days performance. While this tool doesn't know enough about your advertising goals to make a recommendation of which specific bid is best for you, it does provide useful data and good insight on bid ideas to consider.

BingHoo! - Search Deal Approved

Microsoft and Yahoo! have received approval from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission for their search deal announced in July 2009. The 10-year agreement deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! to combine the companies’ search platforms brings together the number 2 and 3 players in search together, providing advertisers a combined audience of 577 million searchers worldwide. Bing will serve as both the organic and paid search platform for both Yahoo and Microsoft. Yahoo will manage the exclusive worldwide salesforce for both companies’ paid search services. Display media will be maintained separately.

According to their press release, the transition will begin in the “coming days” and the companies have set a goal of completing that effort by the end of 2010.

The key terms of the agreement are as follows:

• Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites and Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in enhancing display advertising technology.


• Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.


• Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force.


• Bing will compensate Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network of both owned and operated (O&O) and affiliate sites.


• Bing will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo! at an initial rate of 88% of search revenue generated on Yahoo!’s O&O sites during the first 5 years of the agreement.

Below is a video from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer discussing about the search agreement with Yahoo!

Likewise video from Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz discussing about the agreement

Google Acquired Aardvark

Google acquired Aardvark this week. Aadvark is a San Fransisco based social graphing site that draws on a user’s social network to answer user generated questions. Founded by former Google employees, the social search engine has accrued 90,000 users since its launch in October.

Google acquired Aardvark for 50 million dollars. So, why did Google pay 50 million dollars for a 90,000 person network? Well, according to Hadley Reynolds, a search industry analyst for IDC, “The success of the social sites is a threat to Google, and the Buzz announcement and the Wave before it show how seriously it is taking the challenge.

It looks like Google is taking a step towards becoming a leading player in the question-answering business competing against Yahoo answers and Ask.com.