Google Launching Huge Data Exchange to Target Ads?

Google might be just weeks away from unveiling an advertising data exchange that would create a liquid market for the data used to target display advertising, Ad Age reports. Executives familiar with Google's plans have described the initiative as one of the most ambitious in Google's march to become a brand advertising giant.

Under the plan, publishers and third-party providers would be able to feed their data into the market and advertisers could dip in and buy audience segments, such as people shopping for refrigerators, planning a trip, or demographic or psychographic segments.

The scale of the initiative, and the fact that it will contain Google's own data, plus online and offline data from third parties will provide both unprecedented richness of targeting data and represent a competitive threat to other would-be providers of such services.

Online publishers using Google's DoubleClick would be able to sell data on their audiences in the exchange as easily as they might sell ad space.

Google might have chosen some other path, if it had more display inventory to sell. But, faced with a limited ability to sell avails on its own properties, Google apparently has decided it would fare better as a provider of targeting data.

One debate internally has been over whether to charge a percentage to use the service, as it does with Invite Media (which charges advertisers for services) and DoubleClick (which charges publishers), or make it free to use so Google would reap the benefits of more effective ad campaigns, and presumably, more spending.

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