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Demographic targeting


Demographic Targeting is a form of behavioral advertising in which advertisers target online advertisements at consumers based on demographic information.

They are able to achieve this by using existing information from sources such as browser history, previous searches as well as information provided by the users themselves to create demographic profiles of consumers.

This information can then be used by advertisers to segment their audience demographically and target advertisements at specific groups of people to maximise the likelihood of their advertisements being seen by their target market; their most profitable audience.

Demography can be defined as “The study of human populations in terms of size, density, location, age, sex, race, occupation and other statistics”. Using such statistics, communicators are able to segment their target audience, as consumer needs often correlate strongly with demographic variables.

Communicators are able to present targeted advertisements based on demography using both their own stored data as well as through the use of databases.

Online retailers often require customers to register an account to shop with them. Typically, these retailers will ask customers for demographic information regarding their location, age and gender and this information will then be used to tailor their shopping experience.

While the disclosure of location is necessary on such websites for deliveries and adjusting currency, advertisers also use this information to alter the shopping experience based on ethnicity, culture and international trends. Online retailers are able to present advertisements displaying what is expected to be more popular amongst some nationalities than others. For example, Amazon.co.jp (Amazon in Japan) will advertise the sale of Japanese produced TV shows, films and books on their homepage. Consumers would not expect such advertisements to be presented on the Amazon websites of other nations.

Particularly when shopping with online retailers of clothing and cosmetics, customers will often find they are asked to disclose their gender.

Gender in particular has a strong demographic correlation with the wants and needs of consumers. This is because manufacturers (especially manufacturers of clothing and cosmetics) specifically produce products for either a male or female market and the wants and needs of either gender are very different. As a result, when targeting advertisements for products such as these, it is easy for advertisers to segment the audience based on gender.

For example, a female customer on a clothing website will be presented with advertisements for a sale on dresses, whereas a male customer on the same website will be presented with advertisements for men’s jeans.


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