Marketing Pilgrim

Google beta tested AdWords based on demographics this January, and now they’ve added demographic bidding as a feature for all advertisers. You can bid by age group, gender, or combinations of those groups. It will work on contextual or placement targeting and with both CPC and CPM bidding.

With the feature you can reach specific groups on sites like MySpace and Friendster. You can also restrict who sees your ads so you can exclude groups that don’t convert well. Advertisers can’t target anyone under 18 and the feature works best on social networking sites that actually collect demographic information about their users.

So there are two ways to target ads - by demographic bidding, meaning you plan your bidding based on the age and gender of people you want to reach. Demographic site selection is in the AdWords Placement Tool, and it uses comScore data to help you find web sites that attract the audience you’re trying to reach. Some of the sites include dating site PlentyofFish and YouTube.

Let’s say you sell want to reach single men over the age of 60 - you could do that by using demographic site selection and choosing PlentyofFish.com. Your ads will just show to that group and you can write your ad accordingly (generally the more targeted your ad the better the response).

Another Google AdWords change seen today - advertisers are starting to use videos in their PPC ads, as captured by Search Engine Land.

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