Project “Radius Geo Targeting” (code name Radium) helps automatically generate Google Ads radius targeting for given delivery areas.
Disclaimer: This is not an official Google product.
- Advertisers are faced with the challenge of mapping their business area back to the available Google Ads targeting options (i.e. City, Postal Code etc).
- Getting the ads geo targeting right is a manual and time consuming process especially for advertisers that cannot benefit from city level or country level targeting due to not being able to cover the entire city or country.
- Very broad geo targeting leads to advertising to customers advertisers cannot serve with their business.
This solution provides an advertiser or an agency a platform to translate the map they operate their business into a map where their ads will be displayed. One replication can be leveraged for multiple customers as the tool doesn’t save any data it processes. It downloads a file locally that can be used directly in Google Ads Editor for bulk upload of the locations it generates.
- Maps JavaScript API Key
- One of the following:
- Skills Required: JavaScript & Maps API are the minimum requirements.
- Google Products Used: Google Ads (primary), SA360, DV360, Studio
- Estimated time to implement the solution: If no adjustments needed, not more than 1h.
Implementation Guide
- Visit script.google.com
- You may need to login if you're not already, press Start Scripting for that
- Press the "Create new project" button and name it
- Paste the code from Code.js (in this folder) to your Code.gs file
- Create 6 new HTML files in the AppScripts Project:
- Page.html
- GlobalPage.html
- FileUtils.html
- HtmlUtils.html
- ShapesUtils.html
- Stylesheet.html
- Copy the code from the source files (in this folder) into each one accordingly.
- In GlobalPage.html: Add the Maps JavaScript API Key. How to obtain Maps API key
- Deploy the project as a Web Application
- Create a first version of the web app by pressing the button Deploy
- Select New Deployment
- Select type -> web app
- Add the details required: "description", "execute as" and "who has acces"
- Press Deploy
- Copy the Web app url and paste into a new tab in your browser.
That's it, your web app is now deployed and you can use as in the next step!
You can have a persistent storage and mapping of your Business Targeting Areas' readable name to their location targeting settings to be used in Google Ads by exporting your Targeting Settings to a Google SpreadSheet.
In order to do so:
- Make a copy of this Spreadsheet
- Update the
spreadsheetID
field in the GlobalPage.html file
Tip: If you already have a map file in .kml or in .csv you can skip this step.
- Visit mymaps.google.com
- Create a map with your delivery areas aka business targeting areas
- Click the burger menu on the right and select export to KML (make sure the KML checkbox is checked).
If your map file is in KML format:
- Press the "Upload KML File" button
- Upload your .kml file representing the map of your targeting areas
- The map with your areas will be loaded in the UI
If your map file is in CSV format:
- Press the "Upload CSV File" button
- Upload your .csv file representing the map of your targeting areas
- The map with your areas will be loaded in the UI
You can now customize in the UI per targeting area the desired radius targeting that will be applied
- Rectangle: Rectangle that surrounds the targeting area
- Large Circle: Circle that englobes the previous rectangle
- Small Circle: Circle contained in the previous rectangle, touching its sides
- Threshold Circle: Minimum circle that targets at least the
intersectionTreshold
percentage of the targeting area (90% by default) - Custom Circle: Circle which center and radius can be customized manually by drag&drop and using the controls of the UI
To compare each circle you can see the following metrics in the UI:
- Radius: radius of the circle
- % Intersection: area of the Business Targeting Area inside the circle / total Business Targeting Area size
- % Waste: area of circle excluding the Business Targeting Area / total Business Targeting Area size
- Circle Score: % Intersection - % Waste. The highest score represent the sweet spot, maximizing the targeting area and minimizing the waste area
By clicking in the "Show Additional Info" button, additional metrics are displayed:
- Circle size: area of the circle
- Intersection size: area of the Business Targeting Area
- Waste size: area of the circle excluding the Business Targeting Area
You have to select one of the following Targeting Settings per Business Targeting Areas:
- Large Circle
- Small Circle
- Threshold Circle (selected by default)
- Custom Circle
This will be used to generate the Targeting Settings to be applied to Google Ads
At this point, there are 3 ways of uploading the Targeting Settings to Google Ads
- Download a .csv file and upload it using Google Ads Editor
- Export data to a Spreadsheet and upload it using Google Ads Editor
- Upload it manually using the Google Ads UI
If you download the Targeting Settings as a .csv file you can upload them to Google Ads via Google Ads Editor. To upload this CSV file into the Google Ads Editor, follow these steps:
- Account > Import > From file... - This will upload a draft of the targeting settings into the specified campaigns
- Review Changes > Keep - To make the changes permanent
If you export the Targeting Settings into a Spreadsheet, you can use Google Ads Editor to upload them to Google Ads, as well as having a maping of a readable name for each Targeting Settings. To upload them using Google Ads Editor:
- On the Spreadsheet, you will have stored in the "Locations" tab the mapping between all your locations and the targeting settings
- In the "Targeting Settings" Tab, you can customize the account and campaign where you want to apply the Radius Targeting Settigns
- Export this tab as CSV
- Upload this CSV file into the Google Ads Editor, by clicking on:
- Account > Import > From file... - This will upload a draft of the targeting settings into the specified campaigns
- Review Changes > Keep - To make the changes permanent
If you download the Targeting Settings as a .csv file you can upload them manually to Google Ads:
- Visit the Google Ads UI
- Navigate to "Locations" menu
- Select "Radius"
- Enter the output you got from this tool, make sure you use comma between lat and lng
Other Google Advertising products guides are coming soon.
- [Required] Minimum change is adding the Maps API Key for your cloud project.
- [Optional] You could adjust the project parameters to match your project the best.
- [Optional] You could change the format of the csv file output to match different Ads Product requirements.
- [Optional] You could automate the entire process by scheduling the script to check a Google Drive folder for new files and once it finds to process them and save the csv output to a BigQuery table. Let us know if you have this use case and we may be able to help you out with development.