May 15, 2008 9:26 AM PDT

YouTube tool details video demographics

Posted by Stephen Shankland

YouTube now lets those who have uploaded videos see details about the types of people watching them.

The company has added a demographics section to an analytics tool called Insight that YouTube released in March.

Insight now has a "demographics tab that displays view count information broken down by age group (such as ages 18-24), gender, or a combination of the two, to help you get a better understanding of the makeup of your YouTube audience," Google said in a blog posting Thursday.

The move dovetails with Google's high priority of making more money from YouTube through advertising. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt last week promised new YouTube ad possibilities, and advertisers and marketers love demographic information as well as the detailed records of media consumption the Internet can provide.

Google on Wednesday introduced a new way to buy ads at YouTube called buzz targeting, in which ads are placed around videos that are booming in popularity by word of mouth.

User privacy also is protected, Google said.

"We show you general information about your viewers in anonymous and aggregate form, based on the birth date and gender information that users share with us when they create YouTube accounts," the company said. "This means that individual users can't be personally identified."