Yes - this is not a political post. I know some of you readers are excited by that. Last night Google announced that they are testing Demographic bidding in their content network and there are quite a number of features that get me reasonably excited; however, my enthusiasm is not as high as some recent changes like their new geotargeting tools. Anyway, here are the highlights:
- Google allows you to bid on specific demographics like age and gender on certain sites in their content network; that's pretty cool
- Google (if you are in their beta) allows you to run a Demographic report to understand the profile of your ad buys and this helps you fine tune your bids by not only including CTR and bid data but conversion data too
- You can also eliminate certain demographic groups from seeing your ads which is also another great feature.
OK, so why am I not doing cartwheels? Well it is only limited to their content network and not search. Plus, it is limited to only a few sites that look to be mostly social networking sites and quite frankly other than MySpace and Friendster (who still goes there?) I didn't recognize any of the URLs listed in their beta test. Plus, while I've grown to like Content Targeting you need to understand how it works to get a good flavor for the process of getting your ads shown, the type of inventory available, and also your ROI in content. Finally, as we've seen with their CPA bidding process, this really is just a beta and you probably won't see huge results until Google expands the site offering.
In a nut shell, I love that Google is extending their Content network process to include demo targeting. When this feature is rolled out with more inventory it will help the small budget advertisers act like a big budget marketing firm. Remember, this feature as is everything else with Google is part of the price of admission (next to nothing!!).
Think about it. With Google you can run banner ads on the internet on a cost per click basis using sophisticated demo targeting that other websites would charge premiums for their use (yes some still charge you for each targeting select you make). Not so with Google who puts the power of sophisticated marketing at the finger tips of small business marketers. Thank you Google!!
PardonMyFrench,
Eric