The adwords blog has announced the launch of a demographic bidding beta test and is offering the chance for advertisers in the UK and the US to sign up for the trial. Reading into the release the targeting is only going to be available on the content network placement network and is dependent on the publisher site having the capability to provide the information on the users. If the site has this information, more often than not through a sign in system, then it will be shared anonymously to Google and the appropriate ads.
From the detail in this article the benefits of this system over MSN’s own demographic targeting system is that the system will allow you to up weight your bids by a higher percentage (MSN’s limit is 150%) and that you will also be able to choose not to show your ads to certain audiences. This is certainly an advance on MSN but the impact of it will be limited by the reliance on the publisher site and the fact that the targeting wont apply to the main Google search results, where it could have most benefit. This is obviously due to the fact that you dont need to be signed in to Google to use it although they could have implemented it for those people who have a Google account and perform searches whilst signed in. Maybe that will be in the next release, I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.