Demographic bidding now available

In January, we invited AdWords advertisers to join a beta test of a new feature: demographic bidding. Many of you responded and helped make that test a success, and we'd like to offer our sincere thanks.

Today we're announcing that demographic bidding is now available for all AdWords advertisers.

What is demographic bidding? It's a feature that helps you target your ads to users of a particular age group (such as ages 18-24), by gender, or to combinations of those groups. You can use demographic bidding whether you are using contextual or placement targeting and with both CPC and CPM bidding. You can refine your reach based on users' gender and age on certain sites in the Google content network such as MySpace and Friendster, whose users provide that information about themselves. AdWords receives the data in anonymous and aggregate form from participating partner sites, which means that users can’t be personally identified.

Here's an example of how demographic bidding works: suppose you sell women's basketball shoes and want your ad to be seen by 18-24 year-old females. You could raise your bids to increase the frequency with which those users see your ads. You can also 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.

Overall, demographic bidding gives you more control over the demographic groups who see your ads. You can also use demographic reports, available in the AdWords Report Center, to get insight into how your ads perform for specific demographics. These metrics can help you decide how to adjust your bid modifiers and restricts to reach the audiences that give you the most clicks and the best ROI.

Lastly, it's helpful to know that demographic bidding and demographic site selection are two separate ways of targeting your ads. Demographic site selection, found in the AdWords Placement Tool, helps you find and target entire websites that, in general and based on comScore data, have the audience you're trying to reach. On the other hand, demographic bidding lets you modify your bids or restrict your ads' visibility based on the age and gender of the users viewing your ads on participating sites in the Google content network.

Ready to give it a try? Learn more and get started.

Posted by Trevor, Inside AdWords crew