Media buyers and major publishers say that despite ComScore shareholders' worries, Google's Ad Planner, which provides Web metrics and demographic data to online advertisers, won't dislodge Web-traffic measurement leader ComScore or its rival Nielsen. “[Google needs] to add so many things, it’s not even a consideration at this point,” Mediasmith CEO David Smith told Mediaweek. “It’s absolutely not ready for prime time.” And publishers say Ad Planner won't provide advertisers a more accurate look at their inventories. “Their numbers are as bad or worse as anybody else’s out there,” Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller said. So why bother? Google just wants advertisers to pay more attention to the sites it reps through its AdSense network.

Ad giant WPP Group's CEO Sir Martin Sorrell calls Google a "frenemy" because while Google plays nice with ad agencies for now, most everyone believes Google's ultimate goal is to cut such media holding companies out of the ad buying process by convincing marketers to use an as-of-yet-not-invented Google dashboard to purchase inventory straight from publishers. So when Google revealed the first iteration of this doomsday dashboard, calling it AdPlanner and describing it as a demographic targeting tool, we figured we'd hear worried whispers from our Madison Avenue sources. Not the case!

ComScore's stock dropped 23% on Tuesday when news broke about Google's Ad Planner — because now you can get demographic info from the same shop you can buy Web ads from. However, that's exactly the reason ad agencies and marketers might be wary to take Google's information at face value. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Nobody seems to have much of a problem with Amazon's Alexa service tracking Internet browsing habits to produce its notoriously inaccurate site traffic graphs, nor the software installed by the likes of HitWise and comScore to do the same. So why does anyone care if Google is leveraging the suckers who downloaded Google's Toolbar application to serve them more highly targetted ads, with or without disclosure? I mean, it's not like Google's executives actually believe in that "Don't be evil" nonsense. [TechCrunch]