MarketingVox came out with this article recently talking about Google introducing demographic bidding to AdWords.  I’m not sure why this is making headlines now since Google actually made this announcement a couple years ago.

MSN Has Been Doing This
Even when MSN first introduced their demographic targeting feature 1-2 years ago (when they thought it would separate them from Google and pull people in to spend more) I thought it would be just a restriction on the amount of traffic received for some PPC campaigns.  Also, since some of the methods in which the engines gather this demographic data, it may not be 100% accurate (think of how many people fill out inaccurate information for MSN passports).

Google May Have Better Info.
However, I believe Google is pulling their demographic data from a panel, and they’re only using this targeting feature for the content network right now.  This may help make the content network a bit more useable by being able to further select the type of searchers being targeted.  The Google content network is notorious for not providing conversion-rich traffic since it’s basically allowing anyone with a website to display Google ads based on the content of their pages.

This is certainly not a silver bullet for PPC campaign success but another way to further partition the mysterious content network traffic.

Important Caveat
Since the basis of search marketing is the use of keywords to target consumers, any further segregating of potential searchers may just restrict the amount of traffic and number of leads/sales a site receives.  If you or your client are in an industry that is absolutely certain of some basic demographic information then it might be worth using…but in many cases the keywords being used to target are enough to qualify a visitor.

Side Note: Neat Demographic Tool
Speaking of demographic information…this may be more anecdotal than something to base any substantial conclusions on but MSN has a neat tool that shows basic demographic information for either a search query or URL.  Just to test it out I did some obvious searches like AARP.com vs. Facebook.com with decent results.

http://adlab.msn.com/DPUI/DPUI.aspx
-Brian Renner