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Looking For Demographic Targeting? Look Towards The Data
Written on February 14th 2008
Janet Driscoll Miller recently wrote about the new demographic targeting now possible on a limited basis with Google AdWords . While I respect the latest move from Google, who have contributed much to online advertising, I would encourage Janet to look beyond AdWords to other advertising vehicles that can offer true demographic targeting.
As Janet correctly noted, social networks are the key to demographic targeting. Because of their required sign-up process, only social networks provide reliable source for demographic targeting. Beyond the availability of data for targeting, social networks are also a treasure trove of behavioral data that can be layered on the demographic data to provide one of the best targeting opportunities available on the Internet.
So Janet is right to want to target social networks beyond the ones currently included in Google’s offering.
One solution that could potentially offer Janet what she is looking for would be data exchanges. But what are data exchanges?
They are exchanges that work between multiple ad networks and many publishers, enabling the data from one source to be utilized across the rest of the exchange.
That’s why data exchanges could aggregate data from multiple social networks and other publishers while working with multiple ad networks and advertisers.
Data exchanges also eliminate privacy concerns because the data transferred can be one isolated incident which is not personally identifiable. Furthermore, it is not likely that any social network will release any personally identifiable information to any third party source. And data targeting can work without the creation or use of user profiles and without cross-site information transfer.
Data exchanges would enable advertisers to target the greatest reach by targeting data across multiple ad networks simultaneously. Ad Networks could benefit by gaining access to users and publishers outside of their network. Publishers would be able to better target their advertising which will result in greater revenue. And advertisers would benefit from a data network with greater reach than any single ad network.
So Janet, in the future, look beyond Google for a data targeting exchange that will enable reaching all of the social networks you’re looking for.