Demographic Marketing

Nydia Davis - April 20, 2009

One of the first things that should be thought of when building an online campaign is your audience; specifically demographics. The online behavior and attitudes of men and women vary significantly. When you consider your audience some of the factors you want to determine are age, race, ethnicity, and language.  You can use this information to your advantage in online advertising. For the most part, you can advertise directly to your target market audience.

In light of behavioral targeting, Google Adword’s content network allows advertisers to bid on their audience by age or gender. Recently, Yahoo Search Marketing upgraded their system to allow demographic targeting. Their demographic targeting module enables advertisers to bid higher when someone from their selected audience is searching for a keyword they are bidding on. Yahoo allows more flexibility in reaching your targeted audience by allowing advertisers a percentage increase in cost-per-click for the audience they specified in the Yahoo interface.

Microsoft Sponsored Search is currently displaying ads on blog sites with postings related to demographic targeting. The ad reads, “Your audience, up close. Connect with women 25-54.” MSN is displaying ads geared to exactly what advertisers need to start considering, demographics.