Adwords Content Network Demographic Bidding

When you are running a site-targeted (performance-targeted) campaign on Google Adwords, Demographic Bidding is a tool that provides the options to target by gender, age, annual household income, or ethnicity. At the same time, it is also a tool to exclude certain undesirable demographics that have been causing low ROI.

Select Demographics
Choose the audience you want to target by selecting from any or all of the demographic categories provided. Audience gender, age, and household income are among the demographic categories available for selection. Pick the audience demographics that interest you, then click Get Available Placements to pick from a list of sites that match those demographic groups. Remember that by making demographic selections you are getting a narrower list of available sites.

When starting a site-targeting campaign, you first choose a site or some web pages of a site where your ads will be placed. You choose the site or web pages by one of the available options: browse categories, describe topics, list URLs or simply add the URLs that you want your ads to be shown. However, unlike keyword-targeted campaigns, you do not have an option to exclude undesirable traffic by adding negative keywords.

List URLs

Enter the URLs of websites where you would like to advertise, or that represent the kind of site where you’d like to see your ad. Then click Get Available sites. If the sites you enter are part of the Google content network, you’ll be able to select them for your ads. If not, you’ll see a message telling you that they’re not available. The AdWords system will also use the sites and terms you enter to generate a list of other Google content network sites and placements that may be a good fit for your ads.

Describe Topics
Enter topics that match the content of your ads. Then click Get Available Placements to select from a list of placements that match those topics.

Browse Topics
Look through categories. Click the category or subcategory that best matches your ad, then select from a list of placements that match that category. For best results, pick the available subcategory that most precisely matches your ad. (Note: Category targeting is not yet available in all countries.)

You can use the Demographic Bidding Tool as an exclusion tool to narrow down the list of available sites or web pages. For instance,

Suppose you sell women’s basketball shoes and want your ad to be seen by 18-24 year-old females. You can restrict your ads from certain users if you think they’re not meeting your ROI goals. In the case of women’s basketball shoes, you might find that the male, 18-24 year-old demographic is receiving a significant number of impressions but not clicking-through or converting well, and decide to restrict that group.

The Demographic Bidding Beta version was first launched in January 2008 and it is now out of beta as announced by this Inside Adwords post.

Comments

Leave your comments

  • Your first comment will be reviewed before getting posted.
  • Your subsequent comments will be posted without review.
  • All spammy comments will be deleted.