Google Ad Planner Comes Out of Private Beta, Does Not Work Though

The Google AdWords folks have just announced the opening of Google Ad Planner, Google’s newest service for advertisers and agencies. Previously launched in private beta, Google Ad Planner has opened for everyone and comes with some pretty cool features.

However… history repeats: as with the opening of Ad Manager, when the system has just become unavailable, Ad Planner too seems to have gone wild and appears to be either down or having serious issues. Many report to have tried to sign up, but are facing a blank page instead.

Until the issues resolve, read below the official announcement and list of features:

Google Ad Planner: new features, available to everyone
Since we launched Google Ad Planner a few months ago, you’ve suggested more ways we could help improve your media planning process. First, we’re excited to announce that Ad Planner is now accessible to anyone with a Google account. Second, we’ve released a number of new features that we built based on your direct input.

Define your audience by keywords and geography
In response to your requests for more audience definition options, we’ve enhanced Google Ad Planner to support search queries and geo-targeting. For example, now you can find video game enthusiasts based on their likeliness to search for keywords such as “video games” or “video game codes.” You can also drill-down to specific states or metros (region or cities in geographies outside the US).

Manage your site results
With three new site ranking methods, you can decide how you want your site results ranked and displayed. You can choose between sites most likely to attract your target audience, larger known sites to increase your campaign scale, or a balance between the two. By applying other site filters, you can narrow your search to only sites that accept ads, sites in specific categories like “Video Games,” or sites that end with a particular domain suffix like “.edu.”

Analyze your media plan
With Google Ad Planner’s new interactive bubble chart, you can compare sites in your media plan by demographics, frequency, traffic, and unique visitors. […]

International demographic data
We’ve expanded demographic audience data to include France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. We look forward to continuing to expand the number of countries Ad Planner covers.”

Source: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/11/google-ad-planner-new-features.html