Google shows advertisers where their ads click
Advertisers who target specific geographic regions now can see how well ads do in those regions.
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Google has added a new level of detail to the tools advertisers can use to track the performance of their search-ad campaigns, showing them the geographic region of the users who clicked on the ads.
Advertisers pay Google for ads next to search results when users click on them, so obviously advertisements have an interest in knowing details about where those users are located. "By specifically targeting those locations where your ads perform best you can maximize your campaign's performance," Google's Trevor Claiborne said on the Inside AdWords blog Thursday.
The move illustrates one of the aspects of online advertising: detailed analytics let advertisers much more precisely determine the success or failure of advertising as measured by clicks on ads, views to Web sites, and conversions of advertisements into actions such as registering for a site or buying a product.
Separately, Google also said in a separate AdWords post on Thursday that it's adjusted performance-monitoring tools so advertisers can distinguish ads viewed through search results and through browsing content.
"Because search and content network statistics can differ greatly, viewing aggregate statistics for a campaign running on both networks may not give you granular insight into your performance," Google's Christian Yee said on the blog. "For example, a high number of impressions and a low click-through rate on the search network may be signals that you should optimize, but similar statistics on the content network are unlikely to indicate poor performance."