Google ads interesting -

[Mogga]

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I might have been living on a different planet recently but to me it's new - google ads are Behavioral targeting - so they know what stuff I've been looking at this morning when I ended up on youtube.

Have they been doing it long?

[JohnnyCash]

They've been running it in different forms for at least a couple of years - Official Google Blog: Making ads more interesting

They've made it available to everyone from last month - Google Rolls Out Behavioral Targeting To All AdWords Advertisers

But you would more than likely have noticed it over a longer time than that... seomoz ads seem to be following me around wherever I go for ages... they must have been part of the beta testing stuff I guess.

[Nutricentre]

A good while yes. They first started in retargetting with Doubleclick's Boomerang service about 2 years ago. I think they rolled it out on to Adwords last year but I'm sure someone can tell you precisely.

It's now being picked up more and more by advertisers.

[Mogga]

But you would more than likely have noticed it over a longer time than that... seomoz ads seem to be following me around wherever I go for ages... they must have been part of the beta testing stuff I guess.

Maybe I've been ad-blind for a while. The main sites I've noticed ads on have all been vaguely reasonably well on target for the type of site it's been.
Today on youtube was bizarre - seeing ads for solar panels on a song...

[paraleadogg]

With an emphasis now also seemingly being placed on Social factors (i.e. Google+, twiter, facebook, sharing etc) it is only a matter of time before you see ads targetted not only on your behaviour, but also on your interests and social interactions.

It is no surprise that Google filed a patent for using behavourial data to influence search results (just after Panda) - details here:

How Google Might Rank Pages Based upon Usage Information

I think with the emergance of Google+ Google is making some fundamental changes to how a sites worth or pecieved value to the end user is evaluated.

Very interesting stuff IMO and really brings home the power of Goolge+ if they manage to break FBs strangle hold on the socialsphere (is that even a word? lol)

[heartinternet]

You can already target people based on their interests What are interest categories? - AdWords Help. You can see which categories Google thinks you fit in to here Google Ads Preferences

[paraleadogg]

You can already target people based on their interests What are interest categories? - AdWords Help. You can see which categories Google thinks you fit in to here Google Ads Preferences

Of course - but what Google+ will do is give a level of detail and refinement not available in the past.

For example show my ads to males, aged 18 - 25, who live in Manchester and like Oldham Atthletic (not a large demographic I imagine but you get the idea)

This has always been facebooks appeal - but their lower CTR (in comaprison with adwords) has meant it has always been a trade off.

Adding this level of targetting to Google Adwords however could be very very attractive to advertisers IMO

I think this ability to target demographics much more closely is what makes Google+ and Panda really exciting from an affiliates point of view