Google Ad Manager - industry changer?

Have Google just made another industry changing move?

Shortly after the announcement of the DoubleClick deal being closed we see Google Ad Manager coming out in beta - a free publisher ad-serving tool.

Many seem worried about the potential risk this poses to a publisher; too many eggs in one basket, Google having access to too much data, or the possibility of having their ad revenues marginalised. These debates will continue and only time will tell.

However, I am excited about being able to use such a large publisher network in the future. We have already had a lot of success on our media plans by exploring the Google content network on a CPC basis, and I look forward to it becoming an even richer source of sites.

DoubleClick already has a fair chunk of the World's biggest sites through DFP, and Google is great at placing advertising on the average smaller website (and yes, they do the big ones too), but combine them and you have awesome power.

Free ad-servers aren't new, OpenX has been in this market for a while, but Google coming into this market with a DFP-style product is a different story.

Will it bankrupt other publisher ad-servers? No, just as the acquisition of Urchin and the subsequent roll-out of Google Analytics didn't bankrupt Omniture.

And then of course there is the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. I am not a fan yet - there is no agency commission and every impression is an auction opening up risk to running out of frequency within a budget - but the potential from 2 industry powerhouses coming together is definitely there.