What do you do when you realize that most of the self reported data you have been using for a targeted advertisement campaign is suspect? Well, you just remove the targeting capacity of such data. This is what Microsoft did when they realized that the data they had as regards to gender and age was inaccurate.
It is well known that people generally do not give correct information as regards to age and gender. In some cases the information is incomplete and in the worst case scenarios it is not there at all.
The trend earlier was that most publishers used this data to target specific viewers; however, they missed out on large volume of viewers that were also relevant to their campaign. Although the practice of reaching out only to relevant viewers that meet the age and gender definition is sound, it also leads to lesser people being targeted. This is mainly due to the fact that the data is inherently flawed or inaccurate.
All is not lost for publishers though; they can still use Microsoft’s “MAI” or Microsoft Advertising Intelligence Excel add-on to analyze their results. This helps them to better understand if they are reaching their intended target audience.
Google AdWords also allows publishers to demographically target viewers; however, this is only possible on Google’s content network sites as that is the only place where such data is available.