Demographic Targeting
01 Definition
Demographic Targeting meaning: Selecting who sees an ad based on traits like age, gender, income, or parental status.
Demographic targeting narrows an audience by population traits such as age range, gender, household income, or parental status. Platforms infer or collect these attributes and let advertisers include or exclude groups. The data is often estimated, so accuracy varies, and some sensitive categories are restricted by policy or law.
Why it matters
How Demographic Targeting fits the work
Demographic targeting helps align ads with the groups a product serves and is often used to exclude audiences a campaign should not reach.
In context
A toy brand uses demographic targeting to reach parents aged 25 to 44 and excludes users under 18 from its campaign.
Practical note
Demographic labels are frequently inferred and can be wrong. Certain ad categories, such as housing or credit, restrict demographic targeting to prevent discrimination.