Improved ad targeting for AdWords advertisers

Advertisers can now target ads demographically with a new bidding feature, announces Google AdWords.

by Helen Leggatt

Demographic site selection is already available to AdWords advertisers. Data from comScore allows advertisers to target sites with specific audiences. AdWords’ introduction of demographic bidding takes that targeting one step further.

AdWords advertisers can now get their ads in front of their target audience, based on age and gender, or a combination of both, across a selection of Google network sites. Demographic bidding will only be offered by those sites that collect age and gender information for profiles, such as Friendster and MySpace, and even then only from publishers that have permission from users to share their data.

Demographic bidding is only available to advertisers who run contextually targeted or placement-targeted ads, with either CPM or CPC bidding. Bids can be raised to increase exposure for a target audience and advertisers can also restrict ads from being shown to those audiences that aren’t achieving ROI goals.

There’s also help for those that aren’t sure of the demographics they should target. “If you're not sure which demographic converts best for you, you can run Demographic Reports (found in the Report Center) to guide your bids for certain groups,” writes Feng on the AdWords blog, at the time of the initial test.

“These reports can show you campaign performance metrics (including impressions, clicks, CTR, and conversion data) by the gender and age range of users who saw your ad.”