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Geotargeting Paradox: Sometimes the parts don’t equal the whole

At some point advertisers will start to wonder whether their mature Google Adwords search campaigns actually achieve the highest possible click quality. One of the easiest things to optimize on such campaigns is geo-segmentation, especially with the help of the Google Adwords Editor. Beware that although you may be targeting regions with finer control, often times the combined traffic of individual parts will not equal the whole.

Splitting large campaigns is relatively easy, especially with the help of the Google Adwords Editor, or any combination of exporting features available from a handful of analytics packages. The theory is relatively simple, if you have an existing campaign targeting the globe or a large region, duplicate that campaign and target regions with greater granularity. I.e. instead of targeting the USA, target 50 states individually, or just the few that really matter. Sorry, New Mexico.

Breaking up global campaigns can be a bit more difficult.

It’s an accepted belief that Google Adwords has a much higher targeting accuracy in North America than globally, so if you’ve ever wondered whether your global campaign would benefit from further geotargeting, you might think twice. Achieving accurate conversion optimization on a global scale can often be difficult, which is why many search marketers will opt to split large campaigns into regional groupings, or even individual country campaigns.

One weird quirk many notice when splitting large global campaigns into component parts is that the combined traffic on individual country campaigns will never equal the traffic obtained from your original campaign. Plus, you may be disappointed to discover that your combined conversion rate is much poorer on smaller, more targeted campaigns than a larger, more inclusive campaign.

Results will vary widely by targeted regions, so testing is a definite requirement prior to switching en masse, especially when splitting large American campaigns versus large Global campaigns. Large American campaigns will typically be much closer to expected results, with individually targeted states coming much closer to national domestic results.

The take home message is this: if you’re going to split large campaigns into smaller more finely targeted groups or standalone campaigns, be sure to treat each campaign as a new region. Start out small, test the waters, test ad text, analyze regional competitors, and refine landing pages. Splitting, setting and forgetting might be fine for Ronco, but not for pay-per-click.

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