Adwords Geo Targeting in South Africa
September 18, 2009 
21 Comments
I am dropping this post very quickly because I still have a slice of toast and my first cup of coffee in my hand, but I am excited to announce that it appears as if Google has finally managed to get Geo Targeting right with Adwords here in South Africa, and this truly is huge news.
As you can see from the screen-shot below when you create Adwords campaigns, you now have the option of targeting specific Geographic regions within South Africa.
This opens up huge opportunities for local business, and by local I mean the businesses that only target a province or region. Secondly the introduction of Google street maps in South Africa in the near future will allow South African advertisers to target customers in the same way we have been doing it in the USA for years, which is to bring business in at street level (very targeted).
Google also a while back introduced the ability to target certain demographics, for example male vs. female and various age groups, all of which is finally opening up the Google Adwords landscape here in South Africa.
As an advertiser who runs both local Google Adwords accounts here in South Africa and Adwords accounts in the UK and the USA, I have to say its been frustrating not being able to make use of the same functionality that has been available for years in my international accounts, but the good news is that it all seems to be coming to an end right now.
On a more sombre note, the South African Adwords landscape which has been dominated purely by the size of advertisers budgets and how, much they are willing to pay per click is about to change drastically, and the recent functionality will allow savvy and educated Adwords players to rip the market wide open and attain clicks for far less cents on the rand.
Which brings me to my next point, at the end of this year I will be holding a VERY exclusive Adwords training camp in Durban, where I will be teaching some of the most cutting edge Adwords strategies ever developed.
This Adwords training camp will be strictly for serious Adwords advertisers and the addition of the newly added functionality to local Adwords accounts means that those that attend this end of year Adwords training camp are in for a real treat, because the stuff I plan on sharing is known to only a handful of people in the industry.
So watch this space!
This is amazing…now to test it.
Wow, this is great news. I'm glad to see this is finally available in SA, and will have to go and adjust some of my campaigns. I see huge opportunities using the demographic targeting.
Wow, this is great news. I'm glad to see this is finally available in SA, and will have to go and adjust some of my campaigns. I see huge opportunities using the geographic targeting.
Yes Chris, this really is huge. Its the one thing that made the single biggest difference in our overseas accounts. But you really need to understand how to work with this to bring your overall cost per click right down… its such an amazing ability to target at such a micro level, it really changes the entire game!
This is truly exciting news!! Thanks for the post Justin. Would like to attend that Adwords training course
This is really great news!!!. Thanks for sharing the information. This will definitely bring some changes in this market in South Africa.
Yes Anton, like I said this is really huge, the market is about to go wide open once again, very excited that its here finally.
Up to now I’ve used the local radius tool, which only shows my ad in a narrow circular region around the physical location of the business I’m advertising but this is exciting to check out:-)
Good news on a Friday morning! Look forward to training on Adwords and getting up and running within the SA market, it is still going to be a long haul, at least this is a start.
Hi Justin, This is really great news. Its about time Google woke up and took us Saffricans seriously.
This is great news. Google is really coming to the part now for SA on a number of levels. Early this year they updated the maps on Google Earth and Google Maps (the roads were very inaccurate before!).
Soon they promise to add directions functionality too (to help you know exactly which route to take from A-B).
Also, early this month the Google Street View cars hit the road on 1 September. They are driving around photographing EVERY ROAD of the major cities in 360 degree views. More on that here:
http://360sa.co.za/google-street-view-in-south-af…
Now targeted AdWords too. This is great. In the past it was only possible to target "SA" as a whole, but not finer areas (correct Justin?), such as to only target your local town / city / area / street!
Thank you Google, we love you!
Looking forward to that AdWords training camp Justin!
It is great that more is happening for South Africa. It would be wonderful if we could do more business online in S.A. generally.
I have never used Adwords but would love to learn how to do it.
Michelle Jayes
Oh, and Google AdSense (which used to be all in USD dolars) recently changed to Rands now, for the benefit of its SA partners.
Google is/has taken solid steps to enter the SA market, to the benefit of SA. Great stuff!
Hi Justin, this is great! Now I can offer my Bottle Cutting courses to selected groups located in individual geographical areas! I will still market the Bottle Cutting Kits Internationally. Its soo great to be able to teach ordinary folks to Turn Trash-into-Cash!!
Does this really work? How will they work out location as e.g. in Cape Town, my ADSL account says im in Parow(which im certainly not in
) and using 3G my connection says the same thing no matter where in town i am? How can google work this out ?
Google has always said that they intend to go in this direction. Making Adwords more localised and accessible to smaller business. Which will definitely make things more interesting on the nation wide advertising scale for me as an Adwords Manager.
I hope I will get a lot more visitors over adwords now. Great tips.