March 10th, 2006 by James Omdahl
It appears that Google is attacking one of the key features of MSN AdCenter - demographic targeting of ads. On the 8th, Google rolled out their new demographic targeting feature.
Googles demographic targeting engine allows even more control over your demographic ad placement than AdCenter. In addition to age and gender (like AdCenter), Google offers demographic filters for annual income, ethnicity, and children. Search Engine Watch has a great breakdown of the demographics available in the new system.
While on the surface this sounds like great a new feature, there is one fundamental problem: the feature only works on site-targeted campaigns that are served through AdSense. This means that the demographic feature is currently useless for advertisers who do not use content match or site targeting.
Another problem is the process of ad placement. All demographic information for Google demographic targeting is pulled from comScore networks. The ads are targeted to Web sites that fit advertisers selected demographics from comScore, not targeted to the profile of an individual user. This basically means that, while on average you might be able to target the right market, there is no guarantee that you are really hitting the demographic you want.
Hopefully, Google will continue to refine this logic and start to target by individual demographics. I can see this becoming a very useful tool for affiliates and companies who are looking to increase profitability by filtering out unprofitable consumers.
For more on demographic targeting, visit Googles explanation of the program.
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March 10th, 2006 at 10:18 am
I met with a Yahoo representative yesterday and I asked, “What is Yahoo doing to increase consumer traffic?” His response was that they were focusing on further developing contextual advertising. Is this the same strategy Google is following or is Yahoo simply trying to play catch-up?
March 10th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Googles AdSense has dominated the contextual advertising world since it was created. Yahoo!s Publisher Network is Yahoo! (late) response to AdSense. As far as I can tell this strategy is all about catch-up for Yahoo!
Of course, Yahoo! seems to be all about copying Google now. For example Yahoo! changing to a CPC + CTR model in Q3.
March 13th, 2006 at 11:39 am
It was my experience that contextual advertising was a great way to get defrauded. Is that still the case? Should we give it another chance? If yes, who do you recommend -Google or Yahoo?
March 13th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
I think there are times that contextual advertising works and times when it doesnt. I think if you are going to do context match it should be done with lower bids than regular search.
From talking with Yahoo!, it sounds like their aggressive rollout of Y!PN caused some quality issues for advertisers.
For this reason, I would trust Googles content match more at this point - but I still think there is a great deal of fraud that goes on in this area.