It goes without saying that if you own a sandwich shop in Tokyo, you’ll find little use displaying ads to hungry searchers in New York.
Thankfully, online advertising platforms allow us to avoid this type of scenario. However, sometimes local targeting still isn’t quite local enough.
To help advertisers make their local ad campaigns more affective, Google is introducing some new features in AdWords to help users create ads that are more relevant to local customers.
Target customers by ZIP code
Google has taken location targeting with Adwords a step further, allowing advertisers to target more than 30,000 (US) ZIP codes in their AdWords campaigns.
Advertisers will be able to add up to 1,000 post codes at a time to search ad campaigns with AdWords Location Targeting. You can also obtain feedback on campaign performance at postal code level, like so:
Location insertion
Advertisers wanting to advertise in various locations can create a single ad campaign that can appear variably in specific locations. Location Insertion allows you to create a constant ad title, text, display URL, and/or destination URL and Adwords will then dynamically update your ads’ address / contact text according to postal (ZIP) code. This allows advertisers to target various locations with the same ad, without the need to run multiple ad campaigns.
More control
Your location targeting method allows you to:
- Target using physical location: Reach customers who are likely to be physically located in your targeted geographic areas
- Target using search intent: Reach customers whose searches or search settings show that they’re interested in your targeted geographic locations
- Target using either physical location or search intent: Reach customers with both options
Your location exclusion method allows you to:
- Exclude by physical location only: Exclude customers who are likely to be physically located in your excluded geographic areas
- Exclude by physical location and search intent: Exclude customers who are likely to be physically located in your excluded geographic areas OR searching for keywords related to your excluded geographic locations
These new features will surely be welcomed by AdWords users who seek more affective ways to target local audiences. The only question is, why didn’t AdWords offer this before?
