Geo Targeting at Scale for PPC: Regions, Cities, Postcodes

Most advertisers set their location targeting to "United States" and call it done. Smart advertisers dig deeper into geographic performance to find hidden opportunities and eliminate waste. Your best ROAS might be hiding in specific cities—not your whole country. Here's how to use advanced location targeting for better results.

Master Different Targeting Options

Target by country, region, city, radius, or postcode depending on your business model and goals. Ecommerce brands might target entire countries but exclude expensive metropolitan areas where competition drives up costs. Local service businesses should use radius targeting around their service areas – typically 10-25 miles depending on the industry.

Use location-specific ad copy and landing pages. You’ll improve relevance and conversion rates. Specificity and relevance work best – an ad for “Chicago plumbers” will always outperform generic ads when someone’s searching in Chicago. Create location-specific headlines, descriptions, and landing pages – you want to broadcast that you’re in the city or region you're targeting.

Apply bid modifiers to boost performance in top-performing regions while reducing spend in underperforming areas. If California generates twice the ROAS of other states, set a +50% bid modifier for California and -20% for lower-performing states. This automatically allocates more budget to your best markets.

Analyze performance by geography using Google Ads location reports to identify patterns and opportunities. You might discover that small cities outperform major metropolitan areas, or that certain regions have much higher conversion rates despite lower search volume.

Scale with Geographic Intelligence

Run national campaigns with geo-specific ad customizers – that way you can maintain scale while adding local relevance. Ad customizers automatically insert location names, local phone numbers, or region-specific offers into your ads based on where the searcher is located. This gives you local relevance without managing hundreds of separate campaigns.