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Your Target Audience May Be Larger than You ThinkPosted by Joe on March 26, 2007 in Google AdWords, PPC Management Tips |
I have been managing an account that is geographically targeting the Midwest (Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Kentucky). I created a geo-targeted Adwords campaign, and about a week later I also initiated a campaign that was distributed throughout the entire US. I loaded this national campaign with the same keywords as my regional campaign except I added geo-qualifying terms such as “Indiana” and “Indianapolis” to each keyword (for example: “Indianapolis widget maker”). This way if someone in Texas needs a widget maker in Indiana, our ad would appear. Simple enough.
After allowing my nationally focused ad group to run for two days I noticed I wasn’t getting any impressions, so I put in a call to my friendly Google Relationship Manager and did some additional research. I learned that when you geo-target an ad with the keyword “widget maker” to Indiana, AdWords can interpret that as if you’ve listed “Indiana widget maker.” Since the new keywords I added to my national campaign were keywords that already existed within my geo-targeted campaign, with geographic terms tacked on to them, AdWords was interpreting them as the same keywords. Whenever two ads in the same account are running on the same keyword, or those interpreted to be the same, keyword Adwords shows the better-performing ad. Since the ads from the geo-targeted campaign have more account history Adwords was showing the ads from my geo-targeted campaign.
When using geo-targeting, users in California, for example, who search for “Indiana widget maker” are able to see my ads. Users in Indianapolis who search for “widget maker” are also be able to see my ads. But, users in California who search for “widget maker” will not.
I still need to look into this more in depth, but it an interesting find…
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- What Everyone Ought to Know About Geo-Targeting in Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing
April 26th, 2007 at 9:31 am
[...] There have been some debates on whether or not this tactic is necessary and/or relevant. We had a discussion with both of our Google Reps about Regional Targeting. One rep stated that if you are running a Regional IP targeted campaign, users outside of your chosen area may in fact be able to see your ads. This is possible because if a user enters ‘Indiana widget maker‘ outside of Indiana - the AdWords system may make that association and display the ad due to its relevance. The other rep agreed with this point, but made clear that it is still important to run the ‘companion’ campaign that uses geographic modifiers. When a searcher enters the keyword ‘Indiana widget maker,’ AdWords can then choose to display the better performing ad from either the IP targeted campaign (no geographic keyword modifiers) or the nationwide geographic keyword campaign. This point has been shown in one of our accounts. This client has had both campaigns up and running for nearly 2 months, and the better performing IP targeted campaign receives nearly all of the impressions and subsequent clicks. [...]