Consumers are no longer characterised by demographic thanks to search marketing. Instead they are defined by their personal motivation and interests.

This was the view of Colin Petrie-Norris, Managing Director, International Specific Media, speaking at the FT Digital Media & Broadcasting conference this morning.

Petrie-Norris shared a list of items that he’d searched for in the last few days with the audience. These included a number of innocent products intended as gifts that he said that he would rather not share with his wife to make the point that Google knows more about a user than their friends and family.

A similar point was raised by Sir Martin Sorrell in the Q&A session after his keynote speech. Google now has thousands of data point on an individuals search habits. Why is it then, a member of the audience asked, that Google isn’t using this data to better target customers in real time search.

Sorrell said that when Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at WPP’s strategy meeting last year he said that Google planned to start targeting ads based on using algorithms based on your historical searches.

But for now the technology simply isn’t there yet to analyse data and serve a result within a screen refresh according to Petrie-Norris.

The issue of personal privacy was raised several times during the morning’s sessions at the conference. The conclusion was that absolute transparency and opt-in is critical to the success.

“Why wouldn’t you want better targeting advertising?” said Stephen Nuttall, Commercial Director, BSkyB.