I attended a dinner tonight that featured the head of sales and marketing for Google Canada. When it came time for the Q&A I asked something like "demographic targeting is now available for AdWords advertisers to target Americans of different demographics. Is this feature in the works so that we here in Canada will be able to demographically target Canadians?".
I was mostly expecting to be brushed off and given a "we don't talk about products or features that are not yet released" but insead got "there are absolutly no ways to target demographically with Google. You must be confusing demographic targeting with geographic targeting. They are very easy to confuse" and then went on about geotargeting.
As an AdWords advertiser and online marketer, I know the difference between geotargeting and demographic targeting. I felt a little insulted and confused that she would outright deny this feature that we can see plain and clear in our AdWords accounts.
Google reps are usually pretty good in their response to questions. This was awful. At least I made some good contacts after the session who came to me to question her response as well.
Has anyone else had reps who have made themselves look silly or who have not known about what is going on in their own company?
[edited by: mona at 3:35 pm (utc) on Mar. 16, 2006]
