Mountain View, California –– Over the weekend Google unveiled numerous updates to some of its products, but an important one to its cash-cow the AdWords. The company has announced two new features that intends to help advertisers create ads that are more relevant to local customers and the ability to target more than 30,000 ZIP codes in AdWords, and enhanced an existing feature to its AdWords Product, said Richard Holden, a Google product management director.
Other enhancements include, Location Insertion, which is intended at letting advertisers with multiple locations create one ad, and have information effectively inserted depending on the user’s query or location, giving advertisers the ability to find potential customers in a familiar, granular way.
However, the optimized AdWords provides more accuracy via advanced targeting by zip code, this would enable advertisers to create a single ad for multiple locations and allows advertisers to target more than 30,000 US zip codes.
Furthermore, they can add up to 1,000 postal codes simultaneously to search ad campaigns, as well as improves on the existing Advanced Location Targeting feature. AdWords Location gives advertisers more exactness about which ad to show and when, based on origin and regardless of the intent of the search.
“These set of features will empower advertisers with more control over how they target advertising locally,” Holden said. “It also gives consumers higher quality ads by giving them the right ad at the right time.”
This is a crucial area for advertisers, considering more than 20 percent of all searches on Google are related to a location. They will also be able to view campaign performance stats by ZIP code. Both features are part of location extensions, which are also getting some other tweaks in response to feedback.
By the way, it is worth noting that previously, Google displayed ads based on a user’s search history as well as city and metro targeting, though ‘this had some unforeseen consequences where ads were not showing what advertisers wanted them to show,’ Holden said. Location Targeting is especially useful for the travel sector, Holden added.
Another new feature, is Location Insertion, which automatically inserts unique local information into online ads. Location Insertion is especially useful for advertisers that allows them to create a single ad for all locations, and AdWords will then insert the city name, postal code, and phone number of the appropriate location when the ad is displayed. For instance, if your ad text says: “Find a {lb.city:Local} Store or Shop Online,” a user viewing your ad in Chicago would see: “Find a Chicago Store or Shop Online.” This new feature eliminated all the work to building out ad text featuring local information for all your locations.
“Advertisers can set up different ad campaigns targeted to different destinations from one source location and they can come up with more specific ad creative,” Holden added. Besides, Location insertion will work even if other extensions–like sitelinks–take precedence over your location extensions.
Moving forward, Google has also modified the wording around its advanced location targeting, apparently in response to travel advertisers. In conclusion, Google unveiled four enhancements to its existing Advanced Location Targeting feature. These include re-wording the platform to make it easier to understand; showing ads to people in a physical location regardless of search subjects; more control over location targeting on Google’s Display Network; and changes to exclusion methods.