Although this conversation is nothing new, it's good to see it continuing to bubble up beyond the uber-tech meetups and podcast conferences. As the topic gains momentum, it presses organizations like Comscore to the reality of how they must change to meaningfully address metrics for advertisers in social media. By the way, Comscore's message at OMMA was that advertisers must see metrics they are familiar with. Are you surprised?

Margret Clerkin, CEO of Mindshare Interaction, said yesterday, "it's wrong to do media placement on social networking because it's about conversations." I can't speak for Margret -- but if I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt, I'm guessing what she really means is that media placement within social networking shouldn't be measured by the normal standards.

If you think it's simply wrong, you should listen to our recent podcast with Bill Flitter, CEO of Pheedo. Bottom line: the creation of distributed media (content outside the website) is dramatically increasing. It would be irresponsible for marketers to wait for the perfect metric before engaging in this new world.

Most interactive media planners would agree that having a free planning tool would benefit our industry tremendously. Google has already released updates for Ad Planner, so I have hope that they will continue to improve the product to compete with larger, subscription-based tools. Until then, below are three reasons Ad Planner will not put Nielsen or ComScore out of business any time soon.

Why Google Ad Planner Can't Compete

1. Target audience definition is limited.

Media planners love to define niche audiences for their targeted marketing messages. These target definitions usually contain a mix of both demographic and psychographic qualities (such as age and specific purchasing behavior/interests).

Currently, Google's Ad Planner only allows you to define a target based on a very limited number of demographics. Both @plan and Media Metrix allow planners to mix and match hundreds of characteristics to create a targeted audience, and thus a more targeted list of sites.

2. Sites can only be filtered by inclusion in Google's content network.
When I am planning an online campaign for a client, I am only interested in reviewing sites that accept advertising. Ad planner does not have a good way to filter these sites out of the master list. The current filter does allow you to exclude sites that are not included in their content network, but this filter gets rid of sites that may be a good fit for sponsorship or banner ad placement.

@plan and Media Metrix offer filters that show any site that accepts advertising, whether or not they are included in a specific network. This type of filter is more ideal than sifting through hundreds of site names to determine which ones accept advertising.

3. Site metrics are not target specific.
With the exception of Comp Index, all of the site metrics shown are based on total traffic, not the specific target audience defined in Ad Planner. While Comp Index gives planners a general comparison of which sites have a higher composition of the defined target, I am more interested in the actual percentage of site visitors that meet the target audience I defined.

@plan and Media Metrix both provide these target specific numbers, such as composition. Hopefully by now you get my drift. These two tools provide a more detailed analysis of which sites are best for a specific target audience.

Despite being somewhat disappointed by the initial beta of Google Ad Planner, the tool does provide an easy way for any online marketers to compare traffic for multiple sites. Hopefully, with enough feedback, Google will turn Ad Planner into a more competitive interactive planning tool.