How to Set Up Ad Customizers for Geotargeting – 5 Simple Steps

One of the recent good news about Google advertising is that ad customizers get more powerful than before.

Speaking of customized ad texts, the most common function companies are using is dynamic keyword insertion (DKI). This function enables advertisers to show ads more relevant to what customers are searching for, using {keywords: default text} insertion.

Compared with DKI, ad customizers can offer advertisers to play between ads and feeds, or play ads by programming – It is possible to show ads with a countdown timer (perfect for sale promotions), device-specific ads (reduce the complexity of creating mobile ads), audience-specific ads (perfect to make the best use of RLSA), product-driven ads, and location-specific ads.

Today, let’s take a look at how to set up Geo-targeting ads as a “starter case” for testing this new feature. Scenario: you want to show ads with city names to customers from different cities.

Step1: Get the location criteria

• Go to https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/geotargeting

• Download the latest version of location criteria data
• Open the Excel sheet, filter out for China (CN) in column E (country code), then you get the location data for all the city names in China.

Step 2. Prepare the Feed Data Sheet

• Copy the Colum B and Column C into your own feed data sheet. Name them as Location and Target Location. Target Location column tell Google: please match the end users’ IP address with these cities; Location Column tell Google: please show these city names if the matching step is done.

• Remember to name your feed sheet in a simple and recognisable way, e.g. GeoFeed.

Step 3: Upload your Feed Sheet

• Go to Adwords interface, and click on Business data

 

• Upload your Feed (Easy!)

 

Step 4: Set up ETAs with customizers

• Go to the ad groups in which you want the ad customizers are.
• You can insert the customizers in Headline 1 or Headline 2 or Description line. This is a glimpse of how it should look like:

• Remember to check if it is working in Preview tool.

Step 5: Create backup ads

Make sure that all the ad groups with AC have a backup text ads. The reason is that, it can happen that Google cannot identify the exact location of a user. At this point, the backup text ads will show to the user.

 

Voila! Your ads with personalized Geo message are ready to increase CTR and further down the funnel.