Google AdWords Interest categories allow advertisers to reach targeted audiences across the Google Display Network by allowing advertisers to choose from a list of categories – from Yoga & Pilates to Sports Memorabilia or Vehicle Shopping – and Google will show ads to people who are interested in those categories.

Users are targeted for interest categories based on their browsing history. So for example, when a user visits a partner website, Google analyzes the content of the page and site to show contextually relevant ads. Google then associates the interests with the user’s cookie. Google says that they may also use the websites a user visits, as well as third-party data, to infer the user’s gender, age category and other demographics. If the sites that a user visits have a majority of male visitors, Google may associate your cookie with the male demographic category. (Google does not associate sensitive interest categories such as those based on race, religion, sexual orientation, health or financial categories with a user’s cookie).

Interest category campaigns are a great way to increase visibility of your products or services because you can target a specific audience. Ads using interest categories reach users when they are visiting websites that may not be related to the interested category you are targeting. In other words, you can target someone who has been on yoga related websites while the user is on a website that is not related to yoga.

Interest category campaigns are a great way to supplement keyword or placement campaigns because you can reach users who are interested in your products or services even when they are on unrelated pages. This means you can reach a wider audience and generate more qualified traffic to your site.

The world of search engine marketing is constantly changing and it is up to businesses as well as advertisers to keep pace. Google recently modified their campaign geo–target settings, which should gives advertisers a little more leverage.

The new geo-target settings are more informative, in regard to showing how many people can be reached. For example if a business is thinking of targeting Kalamazoo Michigan, they can see how people are in that target area.  Google will also display locations enclosing a particular area and offer related locations that might be of interest. This is a plus because many times people want to target a certain area, but don’t know if they’ll be reaching a decent amount of people with their advertising. This new reach feature solves that problem. 

Another adjustment Google made is in the map section of the geo-target settings. Previously, a very plain version of the map would display the targeted location. However, Google has upgraded the map to show a more detailed area of the respective location. The map is almost identical to the map shown when one does a Google map search; streets are shown and even landmark locations in the area are displayed on the map.

The geo-target settings seem to be a consistent work in progress because there are features that are available this week that weren’t available a few weeks ago. This should not be a surprise, because Google has a “send feedback” button for people to offer their opinion on the geo-targeting modifications.  When it’s all said and done, these changes should help businesses reach more of their target audience.

Paid search advertisements on Google may include celebrity endorsements in the near future. Google has just started testing an annotation under paid search results that include a celebrity endorsement along with a small image of the celebrity.

In the screen shot below, when the phrase “kardashian sears” was searched, a celebrity endorsement from Khloe Kardashian appeared underneath the paid search ad. In this example, Sears is telling Google that Khloe Kardashian has endorsed this product line that is available on the Sears website.

Google Product Manager, Christian Oestlien said that there are only a handful of advertisers in the current program and limited information is available. 

It will be very interesting to see how celebrity endorsements affect the performance of paid search advertising, especially with fourth quarter right around the corner and a big push for holiday sales. I would expect that paid search advertisements with endorsements from celebrities would garner more clicks than an advertisement without.  In addition, there are many advertisers that would benefit from this new feature, because there are so many celebrity-endorsed products and services.