Microsoft dispels age and gender for a reason; affecting marketers

Microsoft recently removed age and gender as targeting options for marketers and advertisers within their AdCenter program.

The company realized and acknowledged that the gender and age data is largely inaccurate or just plain hard to come by. A company representative explained their reasoning to Search Engine Land for removing the targeting tools:

There are certain inherent problems when you ask someone this information. Some people add the information accurately, most don’t and even more don’t add the information at all. So if you use age and gender, your [sic] limiting yourself to what information was provided by the searchers when signing up for Windows Live.

An official spokesperson for Microsoft AdCenter further explained their reasoning:

It’s more valuable for advertisers to increase bids on age and gender groups that they are interested in reaching instead of exclusively targeting.

The ability to exclusively target specific demographics has been removed from the service. Such information can be used to boost bids going forward but not for targeting purposes for web advertising.