PPC-Advice.com

Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I was thrilled to be chosen as a participant in the Google Adwords Demographics Beta Test group. I feel that demographics targeting is the last piece of the puzzle the Adwords team needed to retain their dominance in pay-per-click marketing. While targeting by age group, gender, and possibly other personality traits can be an attractive prospect, it will undoubtedly have some limitations.

For one, demographics targeting will undoubtedly be limited to those high-traffic sites that currently collect personal demographics information about their users. My best guess is that sites similar to MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook will be shoe-ins for the beta test group. Respecting privacy policies and visitor concerns should be paramount for Google.

Another inherent limitation of demographics targeting is that (for now) it will only be available on Placement Targeted, or Contextually targeted campaigns. Translation: advertisers will only be able to target prospective visitor gender and age range for ads appearing on Google’s Content Network. That being said, it’s unclear as to whether advertisers running Content Network ads not targeted to specific partner sites will have the ability to fine tune their current campaigns, or whether they will have to launch new Placement Targeted campaigns.

If my experience with Microsoft Adcenter is any indication of the accuracy of demographics targeting campaigns, all the hype could be for naught. Unless Google is doing something fundamentally different from Microsoft’s approach, demographics targeted campaigns will still rely on sample testing and user trending. I’m not one to discount the collective genius at Google just yet though, as they may leverage their mountains of content network data for increased sample accuracy.

As pointed out in the Inside Adwords blog, the demographics targeting options will likely include Adcenter-like bidding options such as token premiums for select gender or age groups. If you wanted to target Males between the ages of 24-32 for instance, you could choose to bid 10% higher for users that match that demographic profile.

This is about the time that I mention the usual disclaimer: it’s a Beta test, so it might not ever see the light of day. It’s unlikely that Google will abandon their efforts in this project because it just might be the last nail in the Adcenter coffin, but no one knows for sure until it is public. It’s also important to note that mileage will vary amongst advertisers. Keep a close watch on ROI from both Google Adwords reports and your analytics suite of choice.