Google has quietly (I think – no release sent out) rolled out a feature on its AdWords site that allows customers to guide their AdWords purchasing decisions using demographic data such as household income, age, and gender.
How has the company done this? It’s working with Comscore/Media Metrix to stripe domains with Comscore’s panel-based demographic data. I’ll have more on this as I can (have to run to and Etech session) but I did speak with a SVP at Comscore about this, and find this move interesting given Microsoft AdCenter’s demographic plays, and Google’s ongoing tests of site specific targeting.
The Comscore deal is not exclusive – in other words, anyone else, IE Yahoo or MSFT, can cut a similar deal. (Hat tip to reader jboutros).
I like to new tool although I wish they had something similar for keyword-targeted ad campaigns. I worked wiht the demographic tool a lot over the past 12 hours and have a few suggestions for readers.
1. Make sure to check the site before adding it to your site-targeted campaign.
o Many of the sites are spam.
2.Understand that the predicted impressions per day refers site impressions not ad impressions.
o The estimates are very broad
o Interesting to note that the estimated number of impressions per day for cnn.com and match.com is 0-10k but bookofmatches.com is at 100-500k and plentyoffish.com at 500k+ (Doesn’t make sense to me-maybe I am missing something)
3.Review organic and PPC efforts of prospective sites to better estimate traffic and target audience.
I like to new tool although I wish they had something similar for keyword-targeted ad campaigns. I worked with the demographic tool a lot over the past 18 hours and have a few suggestions for readers.
1. Make sure to check the site before adding it to your site-targeted campaign.
o Many of the sites are spam.
2.Understand that the predicted impressions per day refers site impressions not ad impressions.
o The estimates are very broad
o Interesting to note that the estimated number of impressions per day for cnn.com and match.com is 0-10k but bookofmatches.com is at 100-500k and plentyoffish.com at 500k+ (Doesn’t make sense to me-maybe I am missing something)
3.Review organic and PPC efforts of prospective sites to better estimate traffic and target audience.
Hi John,
Took a look at the new AdWords based Demographic tool early this morning (late last night your time) and posted a report on my blog, http://www.webmetricsguru.com.
The AdWords product is still raw and is AdWords answer, I suppose, to MSN’s Profiler, but much more pared down.
I’ve never been that impressed with many of Google’s AdSense publishers – and what Google is attempting to do is tell you which publishers you should run your ads on given a certain demographic or Geo-Demographic cluster you’d like to reach.
But what if you don’t know what audience you want to reach for sure? If you check all the boxes for age, sex, income – you get, essentially, the same options as if you had without the demographic targeting.
MSN’s tool, which I’ve grown to like more, while still immature in many ways, allows you to research your markets for any keyword. While AdCenter won’t give you sites to run your ads on – MSN Profiler will – once you have done your research in Profiler – you can pick the MSN Properties and run your ads there.
So, at this time, MSN’s Ad Center is a better product. However, I was suprized at the speed that Google rolled out this demographic AdWords targeting tool. Last week at SES, we all thought in a matter of months – Google and Yahoo will match MSN in Demographic tools. I had no idea it would be in a matter of days.
Still, Google’s product is very immature and does not give you nearly as much functionality as MSN AdCenter. When that changes, the search landscape will heat up again and this will be one of the next battlegrounds.
I would like to see Google add the option to target certain OSes. I want to be able to show some ads only to people surfing on their Macs (or Linux boxes). You wouldn’t need any fuzzy demographic stuff for this, just pull the browser string.
i believe this is a direct result of the recently minted AOL deal. the demographic data collecting ability AOL has maintained in-house is now at google’s disposal and part of the reason i believe the most recent AOL deal is a game changer for Google.
Can’t wait for them to release this outside the States.
I’m skeptical this can work. The location selection for AdWords based on IP number doesn’t work very well (We’re based in Los Angeles, but Google’s computers show us back East) so why should we believe that the demographic breakdowns will be any more reliable?
Graham
Graham and Graham Photography
Google has to many projects and is growing to fast for its own good. They need to stick to what its good with, search engines. I agree sites like match.com, plentyoffish and online4love.com dont make a whole lot of sense to me either at 500k.
Is anyone experiencing ranking problem in google after adding Analytics on his website?