An average day-to-day internet user is now pretty much aware how online advertisements work. With terms such as SEO and SEM popping everywhere on the web, we all know that keywords play an important role in how we search and browse the internet. With the coming of social network sites the world has now become a more close knit platform where information is shared and accessed on a whole new level.
Online content is increasing every second ! People are creating, uploading and sharing information on the internet all the time. In the last couple of years, online search platforms have realized the importance of this increasing data and have tried to come up with solutions that provide customized information to its users.
The trend is now shifting from being “global” to being more “local”. The need of the hour is to provide information to internet users based on their geographical location, hence Geo-targeting.
Geo-targeting is the method of determining the geolocation of a website visitor and delivering different content to that visitor based on their location, such as country, region/state, city, metro code/zip code, organization, IP address, and/or ISP. This phenomena has helped online advertisers and publishers in a big way, as they can now customize their add display based on geographic locations of the users and display relevant content.
The fundamental methodology of geo targeting are quiet simple: The technology associate with a user’s IP address to a database containing information matching IP address to zip code. When a website is accessed from the Internet, the available advertising space containing a geo-specified IP address is sent to the Real-Time Bidding (RTB) Exchange. This is where, advertisers who have specified certain zip codes in their inventory orders bid for ad placement on the page, and therefore you see those adds popup based on where you are located and what keywords you searched.
The biggest players of the Internet such as Google and Yahoo have been extensively offering geo targeted tools for their advertisers. PPC (pay per click) campaigns are now been customized based on the rules of Geo targeting. For example, Google will determine which ad to serve based on several location cues, such as search terms, physical location of the searcher, and the domain being viewed. This is bringing great ROI to advertisers and publishers.
Geo targeting has helped businesses plan their online marketing initiatives more effectively. It is helping them spend on a strategic geographical area around their business location. Such concentration or targeting raises accuracy of a campaign because ads are seen by the right people based on what they would like to see. In the coming years, we would be seeing more features and enhancements to this new technology as it benefits the viewer and the advertiser.
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