Bing Ads Enhances Geo-Targeting and Ad Scheduling

Bing Ads is enhancing its location targeting and ad scheduling capabilities, allowing advertisers to better target their audience.

The updates will support hyper-local targeting, which is most common on mobile devices.

“The increase in mobile volume has made hyper-local targeting more relevant from user intent and location accuracy point of view,” says Piyush Naik, senior program manager at Microsoft. “Location accuracy is also greater on mobile due to more precise device location signals such as GPS being available, when users choose to share that,” he adds.

Other targeting improvements include:

Ad Scheduling in 15 Minute Increments

Ads can now be scheduled on any day of the week and time window combination down to 15 minute increments, with the ability to set bid adjustments for these groupings. Any existing day/time targets are also now mapped into the new model.

Radius Targeting

Radius targeting improvements have been launched in the past month and are available to all advertisers. Until now, advertisers could only geo-target in predefined increments of 5, 10, or 20 miles from the radius. Now, a radius can be specified in either miles or kilometers and new limits range from 1 to 500 miles or 1 to 800 kilometers in increments of 1 mile or kilometer.

Both location and radius targets can be used in the same campaign or ad group. For example, targeting can include a city and also a radius target around a second location.

ZIP Code Targeting

New ZIP code targeting and exclusion features are in beta mode and are expected to be available to all advertisers by end of September. Up to 10,000 location targets in a campaign or ad group is possible and bids can be adjusted by each ZIP code for even more customization.

Intent-Only Targeting

Intent-only targeting has been launched in the past month and enables campaigns to show only to those searching or viewing pages about a targeted location, rather than where the user physically resides. For example, a searcher who is planning to travel may be searching for something in their destination city. Targeting ads to them with specific messaging can help capture the sale when they get in town.

New Geo-Location Report

Advertisers will see more granular insights in reporting on the type of location-getting results. A column for “location type” will specify either a physical location or location of interest. Data for “most specific location” has been added to provide the most detail possible.

Many advertisers may see lower volume as they narrow down location targeting. Since more specificity reduces volume, advertisers may need to test and optimize geo-targeting to find the right balance of volume/reach and relevance to get the best performance from Bing Ads.

This article was originally published on http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2364318/bing-ads-enhances-geo-targeting-for-increased-relevancy.