Targeted Search -- How to Optimize It

By Mary O. Foley

Businesses that advertise online have been thrown another loop. Just when they had search engine optimization figured out, now they can target their advertisements based on demographic information – such as location or age or gender.

Christine Churchill likes knowing exactly who will be looking at the Google-based text ads she develops.

“If you’re targeting an audience over 55, you might make the type face of the ad a little larger,” says Churchill, the president of KeyRelevance, a Dallas-based search engine marketing firm. “If it’s for women, the ad and the website [being advertised] should carry more detail, and more content, because women prefer to read more details,” she says.

Until recent years, those purchasing ads on Google AdWords, Yahoo or MSN meant writing a one-size-fits-all ad and trying to come up with the best possible keywords and optimization data for that ad to get it the best exposure. But now, the major search engines are offering more customized options for ad placement, such as demographic targeting (age, sex, or ethnicity), geographic targeting, and contextual targeting.

Ads targeted by age, sex, ethnicity

Since 2006, Google has been able to place ads aimed at women on websites found to receive high traffic from female customers. Other search engines have since followed suit. The demographic targeting complements Google's existing contextual targeting functions, which have always allowed an ad for shoes, for example, to be placed next to a New York Times online article about shoes. Googles ads long able to target readers in just one state can now also target just Asian readers. or just adults with no children.

According to a Google spokeswoman, Google does this by plugging data collected by comScore Media Metrix into its search algorithm, and figuring out which websites are frequented by people meeting the desired category. Then targeted ads can be placed at those sites at the request of advertisers. But companies using the service say they also supply some data to Google as part of securing their ads.

The targeted offerings don’t cost companies anything more than other ads, according to Google. Companies are still charged on a “pay per click” fee schedule, where the company pays a set fee -- sometimes just a few cents -- each time their ad is clicked on.

For best results, know thy customer

As with any advertising, targeting the right consumer is the name of the game, so the options offer considerable opportunities for small to mid-sized businesses, experts say. But to get the most out of these offerings, you need to do your homework.

It’s important to refashion your website so that it can collect data on visitors, such as their sex and age, says Frank Travisano, CEO and founder of Impaxion Inc. and Linkatee, two Gilbertsville, Pa.-based providers of search engine optimization, design, and marketing services.

“It always makes sense to do this, for your business, so you know who’s visiting your website.” Travisano also notes that the website must include consent information, so that visitors know that non-identifying information may be shared for advertising purposes.

Armed with this information, your company can figure out which groups to target with its ads, and write or format them accordingly. Then they can be placed where you want them.

The downsides? Privacy may be one. “Hopefully, Google is just using the information [from advertisers] to better serve their ads,” says Travisano. Churchill adds that some of her clients admit to giving phony data to Google about their clients so that the privacy of their customers is protected. However, Google says it is mainly using comScore data, not customer data, to power its targeting.

But overall, those using the new service note that everyone stands to gain. “Google and the others get more dollars per click, and advertisers get a higher value per click,” says Travisano. “It’s a win-win.”

SIDEBAR: Vertical Search Engines

While most small businesses look to Google and MSN’s search engines for the biggest bang for their advertising buck, business-to-business (B2B) vertical search engines may be the up-and-coming place to go. Outsell Inc., a market research firm, forecasts that the B2B vertical search engine market will reach $1 billion by 2009.

What verticals can offer that the big general search engines don’t is context, notes Mark Cordover, CEO of IT.com, an information technology-specific vertical search engine. “If you’re an IT person, and you type in ‘soap’ on Google, you’ll get the kind you wash with, not something in the IT world,” he says, noting that SOAP in IT lingo refers to simple object access protocol. “But if you tell me you’re an IT person, you give me context that lets me give you exactly what you want.”

For this reason, vertical search engines are likely to grow in popularity. They offer businesses the chance to access the critical content they need faster than with general search engines. Also, they offer collaborative opportunities not possible in the general category, says Cordover. “Our users want peer reviews. They want to know who has used something, and what did they think about it. They can get that from us.”