Yes, I understand demographics and target audiences, but that data usually gets assembled via things like Nielsen ratings or market research surveys, where they actually identify the age/race/sex/marital status/income/etc of the people that are taking part. All that data became codified through those marketing research efforts, so all advertising companies had access to it and didn't have to repeat the research themselves. But the difference between these actual market analysis surveys and the internet is that the people conducting those knew who was watching. They either had Nielsen families that the researchers already knew the sex/age/rage/income breakdowns, or they made questions about the biographical data of the respondents part of the overall survey. Sites like VerticalScope have no accurate idea what the demographics of their various fourms' memberships are, other than making broad assumptions that by and large on Stromtrooper, we're predominantly middle aged white guys.
With clicks on web pages, how do they determine who is looking at the ads? 1000 clicks on a page doesn't tell anyone anything about the person looking, or if whatever is being advertised is even being seen by anyone who'd even be remotely interested in it. Unless I'm wrong, "clicks" won't differentiate between one guy looking at a web page a hundred times and a hundred guys looking at it once (unless they're tracking the IP addresses of every person that visits the page). That's what brought up my question about activity on the Trooper Arena; if clicks have increased because a bunch of new guys are participating, that's one thing, but if they've increased because the regular posters are just madder than usual and are posting more often, that's something different. From an ad standpoint, more people seeing your ad is better that less people, but if clicks are the only thing being counted without reliable demographic data, how useful can that data actually be?
