If you’ve been following our #DigIntoDisplay series, you’ve read about managing performance, making plans, targeting methods and more. Today, I’m going to discuss location settings and how the default setting could be eating your budget with worthless traffic. In April 2012, Google changed the verbiage of the advanced location targeting that was created in 2011.
Here are the original options:
These are the current options:
In the blog announcement, Google discusses the changes in location targeting for the display network and changing the default setting. Now, when you set up your display campaign the default location setting is “people in, searching for, or viewing pages about my targeted location”. However, is this really the best option for your display campaign? Unless you can ship worldwide, are in the travel industry, or something other kind of business with that kind of reach, you might want to change your settings to “people in my targeted location”.
Why It’s Different for Display
When a user searches for a keyword, they have intent. They want information about the keyword right now. As you probably know, this makes some keywords more valuable to the campaign. However, in display the user is browsing. The intent could be multiple things: research, education, leisure, etc.. Is that user truly interested in your services? Are they actually out of reach for your services or selling territory?
Another concern with location settings using display is that Google hasn’t clarified what it means to be searching for or viewing pages about my location. On the advanced location setting help page, Google uses a keyword example. Well, what if your display campaign is targeting topics or interests. How long ago did that user search for or view pages about that location? We don’t know.
The advantage to PPC marketing has always been that advertisers have more control than before. By targeting people in your set locations, you can make sure these are qualified consumers that your product can be shipped to or can take advantage of your services.
Check out the rest of our #DigIntoDisplay series for more display network strategies!
