"Ever wish you could show your ads more often to a specific group like women aged 25-34? Want to see how your ads perform with certain demographic groups and then adjust your bids accordingly?"

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/01/demographic-bidding-beta-test.html

To sign up to be part of the beta test visit the site:
https://services.google.com/demographicbidding/

The URL of the button to sign up seems broken:
http://cfernando:8222/ads_inquiry/demographicbidding

Good point Jerome, the "Sign up for the beta test button" is a dead link!

Thanks for the mention!

What's surprising about this is that they make no mention of implementing in on Google search results. You'd have thought that would be the first step, since Google now collects as much demographic data about it's users as anyone else.
Anyone with a Google account of any type has given them all sorts of personal information invaluable to advertisers, including their search history. Surely won't be long before advertisers are able to specify that mortgage ads should only be displayed to people searching for home buying sites in the last 6 months, or debt consolidation to people who searched for a credit card several years ago.

<< Google now collects as much demographic data about it's users as anyone else. >>

Google doesn't collect demographic data. No Google services except for Blogger/orkut/YouTube asks your birth date, your gender, your occupation and even in Blogger and orkut entering the data is optional. I'm not sure if the TOS allows them to use that data for ad targeting or in other services.

Just to compare:

Google:
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

Gmail account:
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount?service=mail

Yahoo:
https://edit.yahoo.com/registration?.intl=us&new=1

could not this be construed as a breach of privacy (i.e f they are using my demographic data ?)

After all an;t my IP address also capture at the same time ??

Update: Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz notes that a similar (?) feature had been announced in 2006. http://searchengineland.com/080124-081305.php

Update 2: The (US-only) sign-up link is fixed now. [Thanks Sue!]

<< Update: Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz notes that a similar (?) feature had been announced in 2006. >>

There's a BIG difference: right now, Google can use demographic data from third-party sources so you can select sites for targeting (http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33743). This beta allows publishers to explicitly provide information about users to target the ads.

Philipp

Barry added postscripts later in the day confirming this is new and different.

(Thanks, I updated the post!)