1. Television is most effective medium for introducing young people to brands and helping to shape decision purchases.  One in four young people (12-24) say they first learn about brands or products from TV and 60% say TV play a role in brand decisions.

2. TV gives a brand an image of quality and they trust TV channels (their favorite channels)

3. TV and Online work together to reach youth.  Image matters on TV while information and validation are important online. 

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Using the Google Ad Planner is fairly simple and straightforward.

1. Create a campaign name and then click on research
2. Here you find a list of sites to advertise on by first choosing gender, age, income and education and then listing web sites that match the type of online viewer you want to reach.   This is all on a simple left hand column and takes about a minute to complete.  For just about any search you should be able to find one to three popular web sites (I found only a small number is needed) that reflect the type of audience targeted.
3. Click Add and watch a list of sites to target pop up.   Each site in the list shows the category, competition index, unique visitors, country reach, page views, ad formats accepted and impressions a day.  Right now it looks like only about 10% of sites are delivering this information though I expect this to grow as the Google Ad Planner gains in usage and popularity.

Even without all the extra data, I find the ability to quickly generate a list of sites based on basic demographics and other similar sites to be of use.  The fact that the site is easy and fast means I don’t mind quickly running a quick list when I have an idea.    For Google, that means we’re more likely to use it when it comes time to spending money.  A more complex system might provide a disincentive for using the tool on a spur of the moment basis.

Bottom line: The Beta of the Google Ad Planner shows a lot of potential to as a tool to quickly general list of target sites.  I find it useful right now and people will find it’s value to grow along with the data for the web site lists it generates.

We took the top 100 search terms for the family interest behavioral segment and categorized them by brand or topic (if no brand was available or was just listed once).  We then scored them by their rank (so the top keyword was worth 100, second 99 and so on).  The result is a ranking if the most popular brands and topics.    It’s quickly seen that children’s media and online entertainment brands dominate.

For those will small children, perhaps it’s no surprise that Webkinz was number one followed by other kids content activities.  While we don’t know if it’s the parents searching for more information or children using search engines instead of URLs, we do know that these brands are quite popular with families. 

This type of data can be used in several ways if you are targeting this demographic (families):

1. If you are a brand marketer targeting the same demographic it lets you know what the competition is when it comes to online and search mind share.

2. If you are a blogger, journalist or other type of content producer this let’s you know what type of topics to address when it comes to children’s brands.   If you are looking to build editorial traffic and are are writing on topics related to family interests and children’s entertainment, this lets you know that writing about certain brands may bring more traffic due to search volume.

3. If you are a strategist looking to track trends, this can provide an early indicator.  For example, Bearville appears whereas I hadn’t watched that brand previously.  Google Trends shows their search volume popped since last year, perhaps it’s a brand to start tracking.

There are two key lessons here:

1. Marketers need to pay a lot more attention to SEO research tools as a way of identifying trends based on what people are looking for online.  Instead, or in addition, to conducting a survey, SEO can tell you a lot about different interest based segments of consumers.

2. Make sure you understand the data when using these tools.  There are two many missing variables and lacking methodologies.  For example, I strong suspect the data above does not represent all family interest topics searched for by the US consumer.  On the other hand, it does seem to be a strong indicator as to what small children topics and brands are popular and this can be valuable for determining what steps to take in terms of additional research and strategy planning.