Since October 2013 sociodemographic data about website visitors is available for AdWords and Google Analytics users. This new data allows advertisers to have a better picture of who is coming on their website and to use it for their marketing campaigns. This advanced data may lead to interesting optimizations and business growth.
Here is the report available where three types of information can be found: visitors ages, their gender, and their parental status. The report can be found under Audience > Demographics > Overview :
These variables can be used in different situations:
1/ Age and gender variables can be used in Google Display Network (GDN) in order to reach a specific audience:
Ex: A clothing brand targeting young man can reach them through a Display campaign with targets “men”, and under 35 years old categories.
2/ Fit bidding and adtexts to the audience.
Ex: A mobile network operator wants to offer different subscriptions to parents and people having no children. Specific adtexts can then be shown to the two categories with different biddings.
3/ An age category can be excluded from campaigns.
Ex: A company selling products designed for seniors can exclude the younger age categories from its AdWords Campaigns.
In addition to targeting possibilities demographic data can give us information on visitors. How old are they? Which category of visitors buys the most? How can we attract the most qualitative visitors?
One can understand which interests are specific to this category compared to other categories by looking at the affinity report and segments based on ages. Then, a Display campaign can be launched with the specific affinities of 35-44. In addition to a Display campaign, a differentiated bidding strategy can be launched where a higher bid is set for users having between 35 and 44 years old.
Note that these demographic data are only available for “Display Network Only” and “Search Network with Display Select”.
As for every new tool, there are some limitations. First of all, these reports are sample based on past visitors. We thus have to pay attention when we draw conclusions from the data as it is based on a limited set of data. The second limitation is about parental status because many users are under the “unknown” parental category.
In spite of these limitations, the integration of data coming from Google Analytics reports shows the direction taken by the digital marketing, namely the integration of Business Intelligence data in the optimization of marketing campaigns.
written by Quentin Verwaerde
