Google developed a new educational portal to help ad agencies and search engine optimization companies learn more about Google Advertising. The school also serves to help traditional ad agencies who may be hesitant to use Google ad planning for their campaigns to complement or replace their traditional media buying strategies.

Google has come up with a more innovative advertising system that is based on Adwords targeting. The strategy is said to elicit improved ROI for advertisers, allowing them to efficiently monetize for various digital content publishers. The school encourages agencies to stop seeing Google Advertising as a threat and, instead, work with it to be more proactive in creating a “suite of integrated direct marketing solutions across multiple platforms which are targeted via demographic research and contextual targeting.” All these, of course, will be manageable through an account set in Google AdWords.

The platform, dubbed AgencyLand, is currently on its beta stages and is used by select ad agencies. Rupal Parekh of AdAge.com writes:

“AgencyLand includes webinars, a searchable library with more than 200 marketing case studies and short, on-demand video segments featuring Google leaders such as Chief Economist Hal Varian. It also integrates Google’s array of ad tools, such as media-planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers and a website optimizer, which helps measure user behavior on web pages.”

Access to the educational portal is free for ad agencies that were selected for testing AgencyLand. These include Digitas, BBDO, Group M, 360i and Razorfish.

AdAge.com writes that while Google maintains that the portal was created to improve advertisers’ digital aptitude, AgencyLand is also a great marketing effort for the company’s part. It encourages those who don’t use or who are wary of using Google for advertising to work with the company instead of against it considering that it’s difficult to ignore the search giant and its potentials altogether. It is a move to convince ad firms that Google is not a threat to their existence but rather another tool that they can use for their campaigns.

According to AdAge.com, Microsoft is also looking at the same route and is also set to launch its own training program for advertising agencies. Dubbed the Digital Academy, the educational portal will apply Microsoft’s ‘three screen approach,’ using the web, television and mobile to provide relevant information and training. Unlike Google’s AgencyLand, the Digital Academy will provide in-person educational sessions through the said approach.