As the pace of life increases with each passing year, consumers tend to become more and more sophisticated in their buying decisions, brand choices and – especially – clicks.
The online advertising market has become so saturated that it’s damn hard to really break through and nail your target consumers with pretty much any advertising campaign. Some 20 years ago, when online ads were just starting to emerge, some of the really witty ones used to receive as much as 70 percent CTR, which is just crazy compared to the <0.1 percent of today.
The thing is, online banners and ads were a novelty back then, and consumers love novelty. As time went on though, users started to get used to online ads and now it takes considerably more effort to get them to click an ad, let alone convert. The ad has to be a perfect match/answer to a specific problem/question to a specific group of consumers. This is why advertising platforms are getting out of their way to improve and create new ad targeting methods.
Google Display Network
Google display network (or AdWords) offers advertisers a wide range of choice when it comes to targeting the right consumers. You can view the performance of your ads by a user’s age, gender, parental status, interests, topics, etc.
The good thing about this is that if you are a nutrition company specializing in baby foods for example, you have the ability to target mothers that have children to take care of.
The bad thing about this is that you are kind of limited in viewing the performance of your ads by one demographic (age, gender, parental status) at a given time. This makes everything a lot less convenient for advertisers if they want to make good use all three categories when facing complex decisions like determining the right ad budget or launching retargeting campaigns for example.
Introducing the New Demographics Tab
With the latest AdWords update though, Google introduced a solution to this problem, showing once again that they are on top of their game. The new demographics tab combines the performance results of all 3 categories, thus allowing advertisers to really take a look at the big picture. You have the option to view the combined results of demographic reach by clicks, impressions, conversions or drop downs.
The new data can be viewed by turning ON the “View demographic combinations” switch at the top right corner.
The new feature not only gives you the opportunity to take a look at the combined performance of all three demographic features, but also experiment with all kinds of possible combinations (age + gender, age + parental status, gender + parental status, etc.) Just choose which combinations you want to examine and close the other tab(s).
This allows advertisers to narrow their target group even further. Now you can target not just “mothers” but say, “young mothers 19-26 years old” (which also ensures that the children are small and fit exactly into your company’s target group) and view the performance of your ads accordingly.
The new demo tab opens up tons of opportunities for those businesses that really care about all three categories (dating services, beauty salons, educational institutions, etc.) And even businesses that aren’t focused on specific demographic choices like content marketing agencies, can make great use of this.
For example, if an agency creates content for a really specific niche (say a blog for divorced women with young children), the agency might want to hire writers that can really understand the audience or even be one of the representatives.
Male writers will be a poor choice here, while young women who have children of their own will be able to understand the target group better, thus maximizing the value of their content. With the new demo feature, targeting the exact people you need for the job becomes a lot easier and more efficient.
Advertising has become a lot more complex than before, but it also opens up room for creativity and smarter online marketing for businesses. Yes, you need to put a lot more effort into your campaigns, but using all the available tools correctly can help target the meaningful group of consumers. The CTR might not be very high these days, but not every click matters: it’s the right clicks, impressions and conversions that make a difference.
