You might remember reading an article or two last week about Google’s new demographic targeting. If you did, chances are it (naturally) implied this would be a substantial development for Google’s business and standing within the search community. You also might have read a blog entry or two heralding the “pinpoint targeting” Google’s now added to their AdWords campaigns. One thread on Search Engine Round Table suggested AdWords demographic targeting is now more detailed than MSN AdCenter’s because it offers 6 age groupings over MSN’s 5. Another, SearchEngineJournal, offered a quote suggesting this development undermines MSN and ups the ante by commoditizing something that’s previously been so unique about AdCenter.

But the truth about Google’s demographic development is that it’s not that big a deal. While it is in fact being offered to AdWords advertisers, it’s completely separate from the search product that comes to mind when someone mentions AdWords. Demographic targeting is going to be offered as an option only with respect to Site-Targeting, which is a contextual product. It seemed to me that within most blog threads, someone had to point out this disticntion to both bloggers and readers. So in reality, the statement that “Google’s bringing demographic targeting to AdWords” is a bit of bait and switch, though admittedly you’d have to be pretty close to the business to realize that.

This misunderstanding probably has to do with the similarly named AdWords and AdSense products and the relationship between them. AdWords includes search-based advertising; AdSense covers contextual advertising. Yet advertisers use the AdWords interface and platform to show ads on the AdSense contextual network. Technically only publishers can be AdSense customers, while advertisers buying that contextual advertising remain customers of AdWords. But we’re all trained to think ‘search’ for AdWords, and ‘contextual’ for AdSense. This may explain how people were very quick to draw misleading connections between Google’s development and MSN’s AdCenter platform, which brings demographic targeting to keyword-based search marketing (via its Passport registration data). Clearly, though, any comparison of Google’s new tool to MSN AdCenter is something of apples, to well, something other than apples.

What may be equally significant is to mention how Site-Targeting is not exactly the most popular of products in Google’s arsenal. Given that, I found it interesting how much industry press the soft-spoken product release garnered. Google itself could certainly do a better job minimizing product confusion with their product releases. You really need to use the product to understand what it is, since just passing knowledge isn’t that helpful – whether it’s because of the semantics of the AdWords/AdSense divide, or because of statements like the following, found within the AdWords help center:

There are three ways to identify sites: List URLs, Describe topics, and Select demographics. We recommend that you use all three methods to make sure you find the best possible site matches.

That could confuse even those who initially understood what the demographic targeting feature was all about. It seems to suggest using all three methods together, but the reality is that Google’s new demographic targeting can’t be used in addition to site selection, and it won’t be built-in to your ad-serving. It’s merely a media planning tool, which makes sense given the kind of data their demographics partner ComScore can provide. So you’re not actually targeting users…you’re simply buying statistical probabilities of reaching those users. That’s the long and short of it, even if you get all ‘McLuhan’ about the way this story was picked up – now, if Google had created a way to provide targeting to males between 25 and 34 with household income of $40,000 and above, we’d be reading about an ad-serving technology that Google had bought or built, not just a partnership with an audience measurement service like ComScore.

Most likely Google won’t be able to compete with this particular feature of MSN’s AdCenter until they acquire an ad-serving network. My belief is that this move is more designed to roll-up thousands of substantial traffic-offering websites that few people are familiar with (I asked the tool to suggest sites like espn.com, and of the 101 domains that came back, the only two sites I recognized were Boston.com and football.about.com) – websites that few would want to select when setting up their site-targeting buys. Maybe this development recognizes what every ad-sales network has known: the point of rolling up a network of advertising venues is to create anonymity, so advertisers will buy what were previously, from a sales perspective, less than viable media properties.

So maybe this development is less a sign of Google’s killer instinct, and more an indication of general media disorientation.

Randy Schwartz is Director, Strategic Development at Reprise Media.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 14th, 2006 at 11:00 am and is filed under Advertising: Online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.