Originally Posted on April 11, 2006
A tidal wave is about to hit PPC advertising and forever change the landscape that has become so familiar. That wave is called demographic targeting. If you haven’t heard the phrase before now, get ready— you will be hearing it a lot very, very soon.
As PPC advertisers (and their representative agencies) grow increasingly more sophisticated, there is no question that the very platforms that provide the media must also evolve or risk extinction. MSN only fanned existing flames when it’s new AdCenter was recently released featuring targeting options including known demographic groups and behavior expectations. But, MSN won’t be alone in offering this functionality for long — expect Yahoo and Google to counter with their own features soon enough.
For certain, demographic targeting is a rich feature. For those less than familiar with it— demographic targeting works by the advertiser choosing a target age group, median income level, area of interest, or other differentiating factors. PPC ads are then only displayed to searchers (or website visitors to other sites displaying these ads) known to meet these criteria.
Want to sell a Mercedes? How about targeting rich males. Want to sell a Toyota Prius? Instead target visitors with an expressed interest in the environment. You get the picture…
Of course, the initial rollouts of demographic targeting functionality in PPC won’t be very sophisticated. Demographic groups will begin broad, (i.e. ‘women over 35′) and get more and more specified as time goes on (i.e. ‘30-35 year old women who like classical music’). While many of the major search properties have for years owned properties that have been collecting rich data about their user bases more than capable of being used in segmenting them into demographic groups for targeting advertisements (think MSN’s Hotmail, Yahoo’s email and groups, and Google’s… well, Google’s been busy in plenty of other ways) most if not all will end up purchasing this data from 3rd party providers.
In the end, demographic targeting will result in higher transaction rates and thereby lower costs for customer/client acquisition. There is little question that displaying ads to a predisposed advertisee will have the desired affect— creating more buyers out of the same size sample group. But, there can also be little question that there will be one more eventuality certain to follow— increased costs per click. However, so long as advertisers see a bump in their ROI, expect adoption to be substantial— and expect demographic targeting in PPC to be here to stay, because it already is.
Paperclip Marketing 
Leave a comment