What happens when you cross massive amounts of traffic with massive amounts of user data? Well, if you're smart - demographics for advertisers.

In what appears to be a "you can't top us" counter move with the recent release of Microsoft's AdCenter which offers demographic targeting, Google has released "demographic site selection" which according to the Google website is "a way to find and run your ads on sites with the right audience for your AdWords campaigns."

Define "demographics"?
A demographic group is an audience that shares a particular trait or characteristic. This trait might be age, gender, income, or some other factor. If your product appeals to young women, for instance, you might want to target sites popular with the female demographic, the 18-24 age demographic, or both.

So how does the system work?
From the Adwords Help Center:

"With the AdWords site tool, you can pick your preferences in up to three different demographic categories. The system will analyze your preferences and create a list of available Google Network sites that are popular with that audience. If you select multiple demographics, the AdWords system will look for sites that match all of your preferences. For instance, you might ask the site tool to look for sites popular with users who have children, or for sites popular with men earning a high income. The site tool will then return a list of sites whose audience tends to match those demographic descriptions."

Where does all this demographic information come from?
AdWords is tapping website data from comScore Media Metriz, a respected marketing information provider.

If you are an AdWords advertiser, they have a helpful section on how to use the tool. WSM will do a comparison next week of both MSN's AdCenter and the demographic site tool from Google so stay tuned!

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