Good morning, search marketers, it's true, Google Ads enabled new targeting controls.
Smart Shopping campaigns are just one of the machine learning-powered campaign types that Google has launched over the past two years. Ads are eligible to serve across a number of Google properties and use numerous signals not available in standard campaigns. They're also relative black boxes with limited reporting and setting controls.
But recently, Google Ads enabled location targeting and exclusions for Smart Shopping campaigns. Before this, Smart Shopping campaigns had a single (terrifying) location targeting setting of "All countries and territories." Now, the targeting capabilities are the same as in regular campaigns, including the ability to set radius targeting. Location reporting in the UI, including per store and user location reports, shows you where your ads have served and how they've performed.
From my admittedly anecdotal, unscientific spot-check of some Smart Shopping campaigns, that scary "all" setting worked out relatively fine. Each of the campaigns I looked at should have been targeting users in the U.S., and that's largely what happened. Now, with the ability to target U.S.-only, that small amount of waste can be eliminated. For more on Smart Shopping, be sure to check out the post from Zato Marketing in the links below.
Keep reading for a timely Pro Tip for agencies from Fred Vallaeys. At SMX East in NYC next month, we have an entire day of sessions planned for agencies. I hope you'll join us for executive-level education and peer-to-peer conversations on profitable pricing strategies, handling client transitions, making the pitch without giving away the goods and more. We'll cap off the day with an agency meetup. All of this, plus the SEO and SEM content you expect from SMX.
Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief
