DIGITAL MARKETING
Digital Marketing 15 March
15-03-2006
by Ciara O'Brien
Google challenges MSN on demographics | Report: Europe's online ad sector surging
Google challenges MSN on demographics: The rivalry between Google and MSN has stepped up a pace with the news that Google is to launch a demographic targeting tool for its AdWords programme. This follows the success of MSN's decision to include a demographic tool in its new AdCentre platform, a move that has generated much praise for the company.
Demographic tools allow advertisers to target audiences based on a number of criteria, including age and gender, allowing for much more focused and in theory at least, more effective campaigns.
The AdWords site tool allows customers to select their preferences in up to three different demographic categories. The system will then look at the selected preferences and provide a list of Google Network sites that are popular with the criteria provided.
However, there are a few things that potential advertisers should be aware of. First, the demographic tool will target sites only; secondly, those sites have to be part of Google's contextual network.
Google will use demographic data provided by Comscore Media Matrix, which covers the US. However, AdWords customers marketing to Europe, Asia and the rest of the world will have to wait a little longer to take advantage of the new tool, as it is currently only available to campaigns aimed at US customers.
Report: Europe's online ad sector surging: A new report claims online advertising is growing in popularity across Europe. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the medium raked in more than EUR4 billion across 14 European countries in 2005.
Leading the charge is the UK, which collected 35.9 percent of the European advertising spend, followed by France at 27.3 percent and Germany at 22 percent.
"The 2005 results surpassed our expectations," Guy Phillipson, chief executive, IAB UK, said in the report. "At the end of 2004 the IAB predicted online would overtake outdoor by mid 2006 and research from the first half year confirms we've beaten this target."
However, the fourth largest player, Spain, managed to account for only 3.7 percent of the European spend, indicating that there is still a big disparity among countries in the top five.
This is the first time online advertising has breached the EUR4 billion mark. However, since data was not available for some countries, the true figure could turn out to be somewhat higher than the figure recorded by the IAB. Countries included in the survey were Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and UK.
Ireland was not included in the survey, but Keelan Cunningham, managing director of web firm Red Sky, said his company has noticed an increase in advertising spend in recent times. "In terms of growth, it [online] is the fastest growing of any of the actual media, although it is still a small percentage [of overall spend]," he explained.
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