I just received a notice from Google as an AdWords advertising notifying me that Google is dropping the explicit ability to target/exclude ads to the 0-17 age group. This age group will no be rolled into a new category called “age – undetermined”.

This is most likely due to Google’s endeavor to be more conscience about restricting marketers from targeting children. Unfortunately, the big side affect is that if you DON’T want to target children, it becomes more difficult to exclude that group.

Most likely you will not want to exclude the “age – undetermined” group because that is a huge group, as many sites don’t provide demographic info.

Therefore, as of December 1st, 2011, when this change goes live, your campaigns may be affected if you are using this type of targeting.

Now would be a good time to go into your campaigns and adjust those targets; and potentially your ad copy, to ensure you are messaging to the proper audience in the most optimized manner possible.