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Google Adwords Demographics Targeting: First Impressions

Only a few days after getting notification that my application to the Adwords Demographics Targeting Beta had been received, I noticed a notification in one of my client accounts that the feature had been enabled. The demographics interface itself is not unlike Microsoft Adcenter, aside from being somewhat simpler and clear cut: typical Google style. So, did it work?

Getting started with Demographics Targeting was simple. It only works on placement targeted campaigns thus far, but you do have the option of either CPM or CPC bidding. Once you enable the demographics targeting option in the Campaign settings interface, you can specify your gender bid premiums, and age-group premiums for the campaign. Unfortunately, this is only available at the Campaign level thus far, meaning if you have separate landing pages or campaign creative for alternate demographics groups, you have to start a separate campaign for them.

I ran a simple test to determine whether demographics targeting really worked. I created two campaigns targeting placements in Facebook, one targeting males between the ages of 25-34, and another targeting females between the ages of 25-34. Very similar image ads were created, one depicting a female model and call to action for the guys, and the other with a male model for the girls. I then asked my colleague to log into her Facebook account and keep going to different pages to see if she saw our ad. I did the same.

The results were surprising.

I saw the ad within a few minutes of poking around different pages in Facebook, and the ad that I saw was in fact the ad depicting the female model. My colleague however, did not have the same luck. We’re still waiting to see the female-targeted creative in Facebook. There are several reasons why the ad creative may not be displaying, one of which being competition, ad quality, maximum CPC bid, etc.

In any event, Google Demographics Targeting appears to work as promised, with one little caveat. The reason I chose Facebook in the first place was that it had a high probability of applying demographics information correctly. Different sites have to rely on visitor sampling and may not match as precisely as a site that actually collects demographics information specifically. Of course, mileage will vary across campaigns and industries, but things are looking positive for Google.

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