Demographic profiling used on AdSense publisher sites for site targeting

Date March 8, 2006

Google AdWords released demographic profiling for site targeted campaigns today, meaning that AdSense publisher sites are now profiled based on a specific set of demographic criteria with data provided by comScore Networks.

When selecting a site targeted campaign, advertisers have the option of specifying a demographic profile, then selecting to view which publisher sites match that profile. The current demographic profile options are:

  • Gender
    • Female
    • Male
  • Age
    • 18-24
    • 25-34
    • 35-44
    • 45-54
    • 55-64
    • 65+
  • Annual Household Income (USD)
    • 0-14,999
    • 15,000-24,999
    • 25,000-39,999
    • 40,000-59,999
    • 60,000-74,999
    • 75,000-99,999
    • 100,000+

They also offer advanced options for demographics, which includes:

  • Ethnicity
    • Any
    • White/Caucasian
    • Black/African American
    • Asian/Pacific Islander
    • Hispanic

    Children

    • Children in household
    • No children in household.

It will be interesting to see if advertisers find that the profiles are matching the resulting traffic from those sites. And I am sure some publishers will reverse engineer an AdWords campaign to see what demographic profile their own site is, and if it matches what they believe their traffic to be. And feel free to post comments if you check this.

I could also see publishers being potentially upset if their demographic profile doesn’t match what they believe their traffic actually is.

There is more detail on the demographic site targeting from an advertiser perspective in an entry I wrote on Search Engine Watch “Google AdWords Launches Demographic Site Targeting”

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Category Posted in Google AdSense

7 Responses to “Demographic profiling used on AdSense publisher sites for site targeting”

  1. Katinka Hesselink said:

    March 8th, 2006 at 10:31 pm

    I was so hoping for demographics in the lingual and demographic sense. My website is bilingual and I can’t imagine an advertiser wanting to do site-targeted ads, without being able to say: I want my ads only on the English pages (or Dutch) please…

  2. Nick said:

    March 9th, 2006 at 1:10 am

    That’s true, and it is easy to developed, but the other demographics besides ethnicity, would be very difficult to get predicted, and I think that this could cause problems.
    For instance how can you know the age/gender of people that visit a site?

  3. vicentjorda.com said:

    March 9th, 2006 at 6:30 am

    Google Adwords con segmentaci

  4. Online Marketing Blog said:

    March 9th, 2006 at 6:42 am

    Demographic Targeting with Google AdWords

    On the heels of MSN AdCenter’s demographic profiling aspirations, Google AdWords now offers demographic site selection with gender, age, and household income as the demographic categories available. The demographic information comes from ComScore…

  5. Kevin Kennedy-Spaien said:

    March 9th, 2006 at 7:01 am

    I would certainly hope Google would make the demographic stats available to publishers. It only makes sense that if G can help publishers focus their websites, the advertisers will get an improved choice of placements.

  6. Microsoft News Tracker said:

    March 13th, 2006 at 6:06 am

    Google preempts Microsoft adCenter with demographic ad data

    Slegg

  7. littleman said:

    March 14th, 2006 at 11:46 am

    Jenn, it looks like your research is again ahead of the curve! Look at thestreet.com quoting you…
    http://www.thestreet.com/tech/internet/10273116.html

    Wow, nice work!