Regional Targeting in USA for Adwords

beta...

[Tropical Island]

Just spotted the new regional US ads once you log into the traffic center:

New! Enhance your U.S. targeting.
With Google AdWords regional targeting (beta), you can focus your ads even more. If you're marketing products or services to customers in a specific U.S. state or region, you should explore this feature.

[seasalt]

Google AdWords = the new local Yellow Pages.

This might put a crimp on the business of some nationwide advertisers. I can see local advertisers driving up bidding costs because the amount they have at risk - due to a smaller target market - may be much less than a national advertiser.

seasalt

[martinibuster]

This is freaking awesome! This opens the door of opportunity to thousands of auto body shops, hair salons, restaurants, bars to advertise on Google without having to filter out hundreds of cities and forty nine states.

Back in March [webmasterworld.com] CitySearch announced the start of their Local Search/PPC program.

Flash forward to October and City Search is scratching at Google's [webmasterworld.com] door asking for a leg up in Google's serps.

Last week Brett was asking around [webmasterworld.com] if anyone was playing ball with CitySearch and the silence was deafening.

CitySearch delivers a great service for tourists and tourist related industries, and it looks like they're stuck with that niche. I think Google has a great opportunity to sweep the non-tourist sector advertising.

[widget]

I agree with the above. Eventually the local campaigns will in many cases be bidding higher. On OV, widgets used to be way more expensive than "widgets new york" and lately it has reversed, with local terms way more expensive in some cases. I tried it with a new locally targetted campaign. One difference I see is that the "interest" bar is replaced by the locale of the ad, so that the number of ads stays about the same per page as it was before.

[vibgyor79]

Very very useful for real estate/property advertisers

[rcjordan]

Excellent!

[Shak]

https://adwords.google.com/select/faq/reg_faq.html

Shak

<edited, after getting upto date info>

for the life of me, I can NOT see the options to do regional targeting, have tried 4 different accounts now, plus a whole new account creation, still NOTHING

maybe the moderator here can tell me what i am doing wrong, and if I am just plain stupid, then delete this post please

[donpps]

My only question is the technology to detect "regional" ISP's or even surfers? With AOL in virginia you can imagine what might happen to aol surfers outside virginia trying to get "region specific" listings.

Just a thought

[martinibuster]

On a related note:
I was told by a Google person (the usual suspect) that while Google did geo-targetting country per country, they did not geo-target per state.

I wonder if somewhere down the line Google will implement localization in the natural serps in the effort to "personalize" results. Having set up AdWords for local merchants I can testify that there are thousands of people searching for local services without a local modifier.

i.e. people are searching for Real Estate, instead of Boston Real Estate.

[werty]

Hey Shak, here is where it is located.

Choose a live Campaign, with the check box on your main campaign screen

Then hit edit campaign settings

Then under Countries, choose United States -- Regional Targeting

Under the Country a regional Targeting selection box will come up, and you can select up to 5 targets.

I am using IE 6.xxx and logging in from the USA.

[seasalt]

I wonder if somewhere down the line Google will implement localization in the natural serps in the effort to "personalize" results.

I'm sure they will. However, I could see it being like google.ca where you have a button to choose to search the web or to search pages from Canada only.

seasalt

[Learning Curve]

I'm using Cox cable in Arizona but the only regional ad I've seen is targeted for Atlanta, Cox's headquarters.

Got my first conversion off of a regionally targeted ad this am. If this can partially compensate for the one-third of my clicks that I lost with extended broad match, I would be less pissed off. Not holding my breath.

[Shak]

still NOT able to see it in account management centre, no matter what I do?

Shak

[eWhisper]

Wow - great find. I've been waiting for this.

FYI - I just tried it in advant, phoenix, and mozilla - and it displays for each browser.

It's on the page where you would change your daily budget for individual campaigns, and it's under the 'country' options.

[Shak]

not for me it ain't...

maybe some practical joke this time round...

Shak

[werty]

Hey Shak, sticky me your email and password and I will see if it works from here (c:

partially kidding - I would actually be willing to try it on your new account if you were

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Shak! (and other International AdWordsters)

Sorry for the confusion. No practical jokes here Shak - it's just that Regional Targeting is in Beta, and is currently only available in the US.

Please know that we're staying alert to advertiser feedback here on WebmasterWorld (and through adwords-support email) as to whether International users would like this feature as well.

As always, I'll pass your comments on.

For lots of additional info, please see the Regional Targeting FAQ - (link is above in post #7).

Very glad that this seems like a valuable tool to you all! ;)

[edited by: AdWordsAdvisor at 4:38 pm (utc) on Oct. 24, 2003]

[bunltd]

Nice! Just updated a campaign, and there I was with regional listing! This should make quite an impact. Can't wait to see.

LisaB

[NFFC]

I like the idea a lot. For it to be useful to both advertisers and Joe Surfer Google will have to turn a lot of money down. As soon as ebay sign up for every location in the world it will cease to be of use.

Give the little guys a break, the searchers will thank G! for it.

[eWhisper]

If I want to test how regional targeting works against my other ads. First because we're in 14 states, and advertise in 21, I need to make 5 campaigns (max 5 locations each) across the board (which might cause issues with the max campaigns allowed, but I'll have to see what I can do with that).

If I leave my current campaigns as is. If someoen searches from a state I don't regional target, my normal ads will show up, if someone searches from a state I do target, will my regional ad show up, and then my older ads not be shown - does G have this all in place?

According to my demographics, the states we're in make up 45% of the U.S. populate - so I want to see how searches stack up agianst those numbers.

Any feedback on this would be much appreciated, it'll take quite a lot of time Monday morning to set up 5 regional campigns for all our AdWords to test this out.

Thanks.

[rcjordan]

>Please know that we're staying alert to advertiser feedback here

Let 'er rip. This is it, the gusher.

>as to whether International users would like this feature as well.

Uuum, yes.

[werty]

Some of my affiliate ads have been updated. This could be one of the greatest tools for affiliate pushers.

It would also be cool if you could select an entire state.

I cannot wait until you have regional areas for countries outside of the US.

[MrSpeed]

Why is this so great for advertisers?

Let's assume we're talking real estate like in the Google FAQ.
The advertiser who has a rent available in NYC still has to compete with companies with very deep pockets for ad position correct?

Is it the hope that the surfer eventually gets trained to look for regional listings and thus the CTR/ROI goes higher? Therefore lowering the CPC for the regional advertiser so he can compete?

[jeremy goodrich]

This will be so cool. Maybe now my uncle who owns just the type of regional business that can't really see the benefit of something like AdWords, will be interested. :)

I can see this as a huge boon to small business, all over the USA. Way to go Google.

[martinibuster]

The advertiser who has a rent available in NYC still has to compete with companies with very deep pockets for ad position correct?

Yes, but your hypothetical realtor no longer has to compete with the Tennessee realtor for the same AdWords real estate. Surfers looking for real estate type in Real Estate, not San Francisco Real Estate or New York Real Estate. This causes the situation where you have non-competing advertisers competing against each other.

It's also a pain to negative out 49 states and several hundred cities just to reach those local surfers who do search for NY real estate by typing in the terms, "Real Estate."

Do people really do that? Yup, they do. And that's what has, in the past, made catching these surfers so difficult.

[andrewhime]

This is EXACTLY what I needed. If only I hadn't found out at 5pm on Friday...

See my thread to see why. :)

[GoogleGuy]

This is something that I'm pretty excited about. Bear in mind that it's in beta (only U.S. targetting for now, for example), but I think this will be a tool that advertisers can use in lots of neat ways. In the same way that country targetting lets you snip out traffic to places you don't want to reach, this will let people target even more specific geographical areas. I often hear people asking about regional targeting, so I'm glad we're adding this tool to advertisers' toolboxes. More targeted ads are better for users and should give better ROI for advertisers too.

Hope that people enjoy playing with it. :)

[Shak]

finally managed to get a screenshot of how the interface when using regional targeting looks

Screen Shot [69.57.148.132]

n-joy

Shak

many many thanks to the 2 people who spent some time getting this for me, lattes on me

[edited by: Shak at 8:41 pm (utc) on Oct. 27, 2003]

[ReRun]

I expect we'll be a huge user of this, as our regional distribution network currently requires us to target our marketing locally. We've used citysearch to date, and obviously this will be a big improvement.

We added regional ads to our nationwide campaign on Saturday night. It's not yet clear to us what hierarchy exists between regional and national ads.

It appears that in cases where region can be identified by IP, our regional ads are running and our national ads are not. It also seems that the top 2 slots may be reserved for national campaigns.

Can anyone confirm this behavior? Seems like an ideal solution, although we're a bit concerned about being boxed out of slots 1-2.

[Learning Curve]

Anyone getting good clicks?

I'm disappointed so far - around 2 percent of my Adword clicks are regional. It may be too early to tell.

I assume other products are doing better than mine.