Demographic site selection is a way to find and run your ads on sites with the right audience for your AdWords campaigns.
A demographic group is an audience that shares a particular trait or characteristic. This trait might be age, gender, income, or some other factor. If your product appeals to young women, for instance, you might want to target sites popular with the female demographic, the 18-24 age demographic, or both.
With the AdWords Placement Tool, you can pick your preferences in up to three different demographic categories. The system will analyze your preferences and create a list of available Google Network sites that are popular with that audience. If you select multiple demographics, the AdWords system will look for sites that match all of your preferences. For instance, you might ask the Placement Tool to look for sites popular with users who have children, or for sites popular with men earning a high income. The Placement Tool will then return a list of sites whose audience tends to match those demographic descriptions.
The demographic site selection option is found on the 'Target your ad: Identify sites' page when you begin a new campaign with placements, or on the Placement Tool in an existing campaign. In both cases you also can use other options to find placements: listing site URLs, describing topics that match your ad, and browsing categories. We recommend using those methods along with demographic site selection to identify the very best sites for your ad. For more detailed instructions, please see this Help Center entry: How do I use the Placement Tool?
The demographic website data used by AdWords comes from comScore Media Metrix, an Internet audience measurement provider. At this time, AdWords has demographic information on users from the United States only. For this reason, demographic site selection is available only for campaigns which target users in the United States. If your campaign doesn't target the United States as a location, you will not see the demographic option on the Placement Tool.
Please remember that demographic site selection cannot guarantee that your ad will reach only the exact audience you select. Most public websites get a variety of visitors. However, demographic site selection will help you choose sites where you're very likely to find the people you want to reach.
