ErinIs…

Oh Google. I love you; I hate you. Most recently its been more hate then love because you’re trying to steal my job…read more about that here.

But the more I test out the Google buying systems for print, TV and radio the more I feel my job is totally secure. Google ad works is a great buying tool because it involves no creative, allows real time adjustments and is completely trackable. But as a traditional media tool, Google fails.

It lacks proper research, allows users to submit horrible creative and really restricts users from creating an intelligent plan. But then again anyone trying to save money by doing the auction style Google buying and submit their own print/radio ads probably does not care too much about the quality.

In their post yesterday, New Demographic Planning for Print Ads, Google brags that they now provide you with demographic information for print. Really? Let me guess, the readers are older, slight male skew, college education and higher income. Sheesh…that was hard.

Planning more traditional media requires insight into more than just age, income and gender. You should be looking at more in-depth readership information like geographic data, trends, distribution, etc.

Newspapers are failing anyways, paying $15K for a 1/4  page ad is ridiculous if you can own the online version of the paper for 2 weeks at that rate. But if you’re going to go into print, its about picking the best section, know what days really work well for you and really target the smaller papers. Run each ad with a call tracking number and website, test out the days and sections that work. Use the same principals as online buying, but definitely not the same tools.

On top of that the creative options for Google print plans are atrocious…busting all your ad budget on newspaper is one thing, spending 15K to make your own crappy ad is quite another.