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Today Google Adwords rolled out a new feature for targeting in their display network that focuses on “In-Market Buyers” and avoids paying for impressions and clicks for all the other people who are just browsing but have no purchase intent.

One of the big problems with display advertising historically is that you end up wasting lots of money on visitors who aren’t so targeted. Specifically if you sell commercial real estate, you have an extra challenge of weeding out residential real estate buyers, and all the others who are perhaps interested but don’t have the ability to buy. If I owned a site like loopnet.com or even auction.com or for that matter, any broker selling commercial real estate, I would seriously consider testing this out.

Over the last few years, programmatic advertising has been getting more and more sophisticated at using massive amounts of big data to decide which impressions to buy display ads on .

(For those who aren’t familiar, there are real time auctions going on behind the scenes for every single banner ad impression you see that was placed by an ad network. This is why you see retargeting ads, often on very irrelevant sites, especially entertainment sites like project free tv. Since entertainment impressions are hardly targeted, it is easy to buy those impressions for cheap in the real time exchange auctions. These impressions are actually sold on an impression basis, Google backs up the data to clicks, and charges you per click. They however most likely pay for the impression. )

While Google is certainly not looking at proof of funds before showing your ads, they do have a ridiculous amount of big data about search and browsing behavior. This isn’t exclusive to Google, there are data management platforms (DMP’s) out there that big companies use to plug in billions of pieces of data every single day, and use that to determine how much to bid on each impression. The companies utilizing this technology to the fullest are raking it in beyond what we can imagine, but obviously you need to be spending millions, and gathering billions of pieces of data. you also need to close your feedback loop and track the entire funnel from beginning to end.

Regardless how google compiles this data, we are led to believe that it is mostly a product of how often the same person hits a site. People who are really in the market to buy are not browsing a bunch and coming back twenty times.

How well this new targeting feature will work will take a few weeks before we see some case studies, and right now it is limited to just a few industries. But real estate is one of them, and you can filter down to people who are actually likely to buy commercial real estate. Considering the value of those clicks and impressions, this can net a big win for both google, and real estate brokers, sellers, and like all great advertising ultimately the consumer.

Here is how to set it up on your own.

First, login to your Google Adwords account.

Than go to the tab that says Display Network on the far right of the screen.

Than, go to the tab below that row that says Interests and Remarketing

Than, click on the +Targeting button on the far let right below the campaigns tab.

The first thing you need to do is choose a campaign and ad group you are targeting, I already did for this example…

Now, click on the Add Targeting Button, which is where you will see the options to target… Choose Interest & Remarketing.

Once in that tab you will see an option for “In Market Buyers” This is a brand new feature that was quietly released…

As you can see below, you can now click on Real Estate, Than Click on Commercial Real Estate, and Than Click on Commercial and Filter by Buyers, not renters…

Below this you will have the option to just target this list of buyers interested in commercial real estate, or you can target many other categories…

This is a new feature, so it might not be available to all advertisers, but I think this is an example of how display advertising is becoming more and more successful for smaller brands. While most people can’t afford a DMP, as long as google uses their data to help you target better, there is a chance that we are close to seeing a time when Display advertising works for most small advertisers, even though today most believe it is a waste of money.

If you sell commercial real estate, I would love to run a beta test for your campaigns. If you are interested, just email me at David at DavidMelamed.com

Good Luck.