• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, April 19, 2007

In an apparent attempt to boost ad efforts, YouTube is poised to start collecting more detailed demographic information about its users.

"There's lots you can glean from looking at who's looking at what," YouTube CMO Suzie Reider reportedly said this week at an Advertising Research Foundation conference. "It's a real-time focus group that happens all day, every day," she continued, according to Advertising Age.

The report was vague about what type of data the site intends to amass, but consider that parent company Google already keeps track of user searches and ties them to specific IP addresses -- a practice that has drawn the ire of watchdog groups.

At the same time, her remarks are somewhat puzzling, given that YouTube is still struggling to figure out its ad model. If YouTube decides to stick to contextual ads -- Google's specialty -- little user data is needed, because ads would be served based on the content watched, and not the user's identity. YouTube executives also are talking about pre-roll or post-roll ads, but even if the site starts showing video ads in the near future, it would be surprising if YouTube was ready to target those ads by behavior any time soon.