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Wanna scare the pants off a fellow marketer? Just sneak up behind him and whisper the word "accountability" in his ear. Be sure to duck quick.

OK. Maybe that's a little harsh. But with all the brouhaha around Google's impending Ad Planner product, I can't help but wonder just how scared folks are about being accountable for their media choices. Reading the cries of anguish voiced by some media folks in a "Wall Street Journal" article, I'm reminded of a famous line from "Hamlet" about protesting too much.

Sure, most fears revolve around the Google fox guarding the Internet traffic hen house. After all, isn't it scary that the world's biggest online advertising platform just might use its data in nefarious ways?

Sure, if you're the kind of knee-jerk conspiracy theorist who sees a reptilian hiding behind every world leader's throne.

But if you think about it, Google wouldn't do stupid things with its data because it doesn't have to do stupid things with its data. From a purely economic standpoint, it makes far more sense for Google to stay on the up-and-up rather than risk the credibility of its new ad measurement tool.

So why are people scared about Google getting into direct audience measurement? After all, considering its position, wouldn't it make more sense for us marketers to flock to it if we knew we were going to get real numbers about online audiences instead of projections (such as those provided by Nielsen and comScore) extrapolated from mysterious panels of consumers?

Of course it would. But our industry has a terrible track record of wanting actual numbers. "Accountability" really is one of scariest words to most folks in the ad biz. (I'm excluding direct marketers here, just to keep the hate mail down. They don 't have quite the same issues when it comes to wanting to be measured.) And while our industry might talk a good game to our clients about measurement, accountability, and ROI (define), it's rare to see anyone really putting his money -- or his clients' money -- where his mouth is.

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