You can use geo targeting in order to display or hide ads for visitors coming from a specific location, i.e. country, city, or continent, with the “geo location” Visitor Condition.
This feature is included in the Geo Targeting add-on.
Enabling Geo Targeting
- Download and enable the Geo Targeting add-on
- Enable the license key at Advanced Ads > Settings > Licenses > Geo Targeting
- Download the geo database at Advanced Ads > Settings > General > Geo-Targeting
You can update the database after each first Tuesday of a month.
Using Geo Targeting
To geo-target an ad go to the Visitor Conditions meta box on the ad edit screen and select the geo location option.
After selecting this condition, you can choose whether the ad should show up or be hidden for the location. Then choose the country or continent. Inserting a city is optional.
Display Ads by Country
In order to display or hide an ad by country, you must select it from the second select field of the geo location options.
The plugin provides a list of all available countries. If you are missing one then please contact us.
You can find some very common countries at the top of the list and the rest later. You can also just start typing the name to jump to it.
Leave the field for the city and state empty in order to target all visitors from that country.
Example:
Display Ads by City
In order to target a specific city for an ad to be displayed or hidden, enter the name of the city into the City field.
You don’t need to select a country or state.
Example:
Display Ads by State/Region
The level of a state or region depends on the individual structure of the country you are targeting. In order to target a state, enter the name into the State/Region field.
You don’t need to select a country. Entering a city name would lead to the region being ignored in the check.
Example:
Display Ads by Continent
You find the selection of a continent in the second select field below the most common countries.
There is also a bulk option to select countries from the European Union, which is not identical to Europe as a continent.
Targeting multiple geo locations
You can also target multiple geo locations, e.g. two or more different countries.
Example: showing ad in Los Angeles and San Francicso:
To target multiple locations you just add another visitor condition with the OR connector. There is no limit on locations you can combine with each other.
Using translated state or city names
The geo location database provides some translations for city and state names. The availability of these translations is depending on the country.
In order to check names in other languages, choose one from Advanced Ads > Settings > General > Languages of names.
There are up to 8 languages available. If the name you entered is not available in the chosen language then it will be checked against the English name.
Targeting locations by radius
You can target a region or larger area around a specific spot using the radius option.
The usage is straightforward: choose whether to include or exclude the given area, the distance and whether it should be measured in kilometers or miles.
Then get the coordinates by entering a city name and click on the appropriate results to load the exact coordinates.
This option is also only as accurate as the underlying database and might still be off.
What else you need to know
Like with all dynamic ad conditions an installed and activated cache can influence the functionality in a negative way. Use cache-busting in Advanced Ads Pro in such cases.
If you are missing more details for your targeted region then please check out the Extending the database section.
The Radius option might not work when your traffic is using a different nameserver, like Sucuri or CloudFlare.