Double-Click has had those tools for years but they were expensive. Microsoft also has the same tools now that they purchased Avenue-A|Razorfish & Atlas.

It will be interesting to see them in the Google interface. I'll be watching the story closely. I hope the tools are free.

"Separately, Google this week is expected to roll out a new tool aimed at showing how Web surfers respond to online ads. It will compare groups of people who are exposed to an ad with others who haven't seen it, taking into account such factors as search activity and site visitation."

Well... Sort of...

When they say Online ads... They mean "Banner ads", not "PPC Search".

This technology allows "Banner Advertisers" to cookie people when the ad is served and then track the person to your conformation page & see if they made a purchase or not. (They don't need to click the ad to receive a tracking pixel) This is called a "View Conversion"

What you WILL NOT see any time soon is... This technology being applied to "PPC Search".

In other words... You WILL NOT be able to purchase a tracking pixel in the place of a keyword... Or... When someone searches for keyword... You WILL NOT be able to cookie users who searched for a keyword but did not click an ad, the way you can with banner ads.

Why would you want to do that? Well...

"None, Some, Many, Most or All" of the people who click your PPC ads would have visited your website and made a purchase anyway. (With or without the PPC ads)

The closer to the "None" end of the spectrum, the greater the ROI (Money well spent) - The closer you are to the "All" end of the spectrum, the lesser the ROI (Waste of money)

Serving a tracking pixel in the SERPS instead of a keyword ad would give advertisers the ability to measure the "Lift" created by keyword ads.

At this time... Most people assign 100% ROI to conversions, when in reality... "None, Some, Many, Most or All" of the people who click the ads would have visited the website and made a purchase anyway. (With or without the ad)

If you could measure this accurately, I believe a lot of people would suddenly realize that the ROI they have been assigning to PPC is a LOT, LOT, worse than they had thought. Especial for people who purchase their own Brand Name as a keyword. (False positive results)

This is why I seriously doubt that Google will allow the banner ad tracking technology to be used in the SERPS.

Great analysis Hawaii SEO. I think they will not put it on the search results anytime soon as well...they own too much search marketshare to go out of their way to lower the perceived value of search.

Exactly! - The key phrase there is "The perceived value of search"

Placing a cookie upon the banner ad impression and allowing advertisers to measure “View conversions” helps to elevate the "Perceived value" of banner advertising.

However… Everyone instinctively knows that just because you may or may not have seen a banner ad doesn’t necessarily mean that it influenced your purchase.

So… Providing a second set of tools to measure the lift in conversions between two groups of people who saw your “Real” banner ad & your banner ad for the United Way (or whoever) helps to quantify the ROI.

In other words… If you know 60% of the “View Conversions” would have happened with or with out the ad, you can adjust your ROI calculations based on only 40% of the total “View Conversions”.

This also helps to elevate & quantify the "Perceived value" of banner advertising.

If you could do this with PPC Search, everyone would measure the % of people who would have converted with or without the PPC Search ads and adjust their ROI calculations down based on the results.

Unfortunately… This would lower the perceived value of PPC Search… So… No Soup For You!