How to Find Website Demographics

Find website demographics to target your advertising.

You've got an incredible product at a great price on your website, but no one is buying. Your problem may not be your product; it may be your website audience. Website demographics provide useful information about your visitors -- the average age, gender, level of education, marital status, interests and average salary. Demographics focus on the readers of your own websites, so you can fine-tune the advertising to increase sales. Additionally, they help to identify websites with subscribers likely to buy your product or service, so you channel advertising dollars only to attract your targeted audience.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Your Own Website

1. Check the demographics of your website's visitors free at the Quantcast website.

2. Enter your website URL in Quantcast's custom search box, which is its measurement tool.

3. Analyze the data that the measurement tool provides. Quantcast provides website owners with a variety of demographics on visitors, including their interests and lifestyle.

4. Modify under-performing website advertising to appeal to your website visitors. The modification allows you to target your advertising to the people most likely to buy your product or service.

Buying Advertising on Other Websites

1. Search for websites related to your product or service by using your own website keywords as search terms. Someone selling refurbished kitchen appliances would use the keywords: DIY (do-it-yourself) kitchen remodeling, used appliances, used kitchen appliances, thrifty living, frugal living, refurbished kitchen appliances, DIY home remodeling projects, etc.

2. Visit the sites listed on the first page of Google. Your potential customers will probably visit these websites because they are on the first page of the search results.

3. Examine each website to determine if it is a match for your needs. Read the articles and the comments. If the website has a forum, check how active it is. A dead forum may indicate the website is in decline. On the other hand, an active forum indicates a thriving online community.

4. Make a list of the websites you like and check their demographics at Quantcast.

5. Choose websites that stay within the proven demographics for your product. Contact the owners of these websites for their advertising policies and rates.

Tips & Warnings

• This is a free media measurement service and the site is open to the public.

• As a website publisher, you can use Quantcast to determine the composition of your own audience. This can help you target your content and attract advertisers. To increase the accuracy of your data, create a free "Quantified Publisher" account and copy a personalized Quantcast tag into your website pages to help gather direct data.

References

• Quantcast: Home/Search Page
• Network Advertising Initiative: Study Finds Behavorially-Targeted Ads More than Twice as Valuable, Twice as Effective as Non-Targeted Online Ads
• University of California; The Targeting of Advertising; Ganesh Iyer, et al; May 2003