Did you ever wonder how Google can delivery Ads to you? And have ever thought about how is it possible that in 90% of the case the Ads shown are pertinent to you?
Well, log-in into your Google account first, then click on this link to see all the demographic information Google has inferred about you (Thanks to Casey Johnston).
In the majority of the case, you will be ashamed to discover Google has been able to create a good profile of you according to your search habits. In other words, all the time you perform a search, then visit a site, a little piece of information is sent to the Google Data Center for further elaboration.
Thanks to this information, Google can they serve the right Ad ensuring the highest exposure the right audience, therefore maximizing the conversion.
Data sometimes are incorrect
To understand whether the data was correct - at Harvest - we run a test.
By and large, the majority of the results were correct, though some oddities were reported. Our Head of Display, a nice Greek woman, was reported as a 15 years old boy, whereas a PPC Account Director in his 30 could have already been enjoying his retirement.
After all, Google infers some of the data from the everyday use of the computer and the web searches performed (that are silently passed back). Working for a media agency, optimising sites and campaigns by also looking at the competitors and repeating some searches specific to certain niches, can, therefore, resolve in false positives information.
Effects of the new privacy law enforcement
On Tuesday, the search giant announced that it was placing 60 of its Web services under a unified privacy policy that would allow the company to share data between any of those services.
Although I feel they are still sharing data in a way or another, with such a law in place Google will be able to classify their users even better thus increasing the CTR on all your PPC campaigns.
Any user with a Google account — used to sign in to services such as Gmail, YouTube and personalized search — must agree to the policy.
Users who don’t want to have their data shared have the option to close their accounts with Google.
It’s quite unlikely this to happen in the majority of the cases, so I will return on this topic to discuss both positive and negative aspects later on the year.