Today Google introduced a new service called Ad Manager. One guess what it does. It gives Web site publishers more control over their ad sales and ad serving. Google's target users are SMBs. It's yet another free service; there are no fees associated with Ad Manager. Google will, however, take a commission on revenue from ads it sells on your site.

Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management offering that can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your directly sold and network-based inventory. It combines your direct sales team's efforts with AdSense and ads placed from other ad networks and parses them through Ad Manager. It then selects and places the ads with the highest CPMs --cost per thousand impressions -- into open inventory on your site.

According to Google, Ad Manager has a clear user interface and will help increase your staff's efficiency and productivity. It simplifies tagging because you only have to tag your site once. And it increases the reliability of inventory forecasting, which lets you always know what inventory is available to sell.

If you're worried about working exclusively with Ad Manager, or being tied to AdSense, there's no need to worry. Google says you're always free to use other ad management and ad-serving products along with Google Ad Manager or switch to another provider at any time. You can optionally enable AdSense to deliver the best-paying ad source for each impression.

Google has convinced a few companies to test it out. Sarah Romer, director of sales and marketing for Washingtonian.com, said, "Google Ad Manager has helped us in two major ways -- it saves us time, and saves us money. Google's easy-to-use system of creating orders, ad placements, and uploading creative has cut my average trafficking time per campaign in half."

But don't take her word for it. Check it out for yourself, right here.

Google did note, however, that there are no plans to make DoubleClick's services free.