Google Aids Account Planning

SAN DIEGO Is Google a planning tool?

That was the contention of Penry Price, Google’s director of North American sales, who spoke here at the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ Planning Conference.

“We’re focusing on being more relevant,” he said. “But our core business is really connecting people to what they care about and connecting marketers to people they care about.”

Price used case studies to demonstrate Google’s search volume as a proxy for interest, showing that, for example, searches for “metabolic syndrome” and “diet soft drinks” were linked and that box office grosses could be accurately predicted 82 percent of the time as far as six weeks before a movie opening.