Geo targeting

Geo-targeting is the setting of advertising campaigns that limits the display of ads to users in a given geography: country, region, city, or a radius of N kilometers from a specific point. The latter is called geo-fencing and is especially useful for local businesses.

In Yandex Direct, geo-targeting works by linking the user to his “home” region (based on search history) or current location. An important difference: “Advanced geographic targeting” - a checkbox that is turned on by default - shows ads to people from other cities who are looking for something that mentions your city. For local businesses, I always turn it off, otherwise Moscow users searching for “pizzeria Kazan” end up in a campaign for a Kazan restaurant.

In my practice, geo-targeting is one of the first levers of CPL optimization. In one e-com project, dividing the campaign into Moscow, St. Petersburg and the rest of Russia reduced CPC by 30%: the auction in the regions is cheaper, and the conversion is comparable. Separate campaigns with separate geo bids is the standard I always use.

Bid adjustments by geo are a more subtle tool: you don’t have to separate campaigns, but simply increase the bid by 20% for Moscow within one campaign. This is easier to manage, but less flexible in terms of different ad texts for different regions.