Demographic targeting is a great way to further refine your audience. This Microsoft Advertising adCenter feature allows you to direct your ads to a specific set of searchers based on a variety of different demographic attributes such as age or gender.

Through adCenter, you can incrementally increase your base bid (called bid boosting) for searchers that meet the targeting criteria that you've set. Boosting your bid for your target demographic will help to improve the ad's position and in turn, may increase conversions. Targeting a specific demographic is not exclusive - your ads will still be displayed to all searchers on Bing, but you will ONLY pay the extra bid amount for clicks that come from the specified target customers.

As an example, you could boost your bids to better reach the male audience on Bing. If your current bid is $1.00 and you have set an incremental bid boost of 10% for the male audience, your new bid will become $1.10 for users that fit the criteria. The data used for the demographic targeting option (age and gender) comes from information reported by MSN customers who are signed into their Window Live account and have included this information in their profiles. Bid boosting can be done in increments of 10% and can increase the bid by up to 100%.

Please note, incremental bid increases are additive. If you choose to increase your bid by 10% for male and 30% for the age group 25-34, your bid will increase by 40% if a searcher meets both of the set criteria.

Set your targeting criteria

Applying demographic targeting is a simple process that can be done right in Microsoft adCenter. Demographic targets can be set at the Campaign or the Ad Group level.

1) Select the Campaigns tab

2) If you would like to set demographic targets to the Campaign level, select Edit

3) If you would like to set demographic targets to the Ad Group level, select the Ad group on which you would like to implement this functionality

4) To the right of the Campaign or Ad Group name, select Change settings

5) Under Campaign targeting and to the right of Target your customers by location, select Edit

6) Under Targeting setting, select Demographic on the left

7) Ensure the Apply campaign settings check box is unchecked if applying age or gender to specific ad groups

- If this box is cleared, no campaign-level age or gender targeting will be applied

- If this box is missing, there is no campaign-level age or gender targeting

8) To specify an incremental by for an age or gender group, select a value in the corresponding base bid + drop-down lists

9) Select Apply and then Save

Good luck with demographic targeting! If you have any questions or comments please visit the Community Forum and if you haven't already done so, keep up with new posts by becoming a fan on Facebook or by following us on Twitter.