A common complaint among Meta advertisers is that their ads reached people outside of their targeted location. Is this possible? Is it a legitimate problem?
In almost all cases, there is a reasonable explanation. The confusion is largely based on a misunderstanding of how location targeting works.
Let’s investigate and discuss what, if anything, you can do about it…
1. Living in OR Recently In
This is the most common point of confusion. About two years ago, Meta made a big change to location targeting. Originally, there were four different ways to define how you reached people in a certain area.
While “living in or recently in” a location was your default, you had other options:
- People living in this location
- People recently in this location
- People traveling in this location
In other words, advertisers had more control over location. They could focus ONLY on those living in, recently in, or traveling in a location.
But after the change, there is only one: “Living in or recently in” a location.
Meta seems to have removed specific documentation related to how location is determined, but back in 2018 Luke wrote about how Meta defined “living in” and “recently in” at that time.
- People who live in this location: People whose current city from their Facebook profile is within that location. This is also validated by IP address and their Facebook friends’ stated locations.
- Recently in this location: People whose most recent location is the selected area, as determined only via mobile device. This includes people who live there or who may be traveling there.
While we can’t say unequivocally that this remains the case, it’s a good starting point for understanding how location is determined.
It should be pointed out that if Meta does still use the location shared within a user’s profile, it’s possible that this hasn’t been updated in a decade. The person may not live there anymore.
The main point here is this: When you target a location, it doesn’t only include people living there. It is going to include people who were moving in and out of that area, too. And that can be a big reason why advertisers reach people they think they shouldn’t.
2. Location Radius
This is especially an issue when targeting a specific city to promote a local business. Let’s assume you want to reach everyone in Denver. You would do this…
As you can see from the screenshot above, the default location radius is +25 miles. For the example of Denver, that will also include people in Boulder — a vastly different city that can easily be an hour or more away from other locations within the Denver radius.
If you’re observant enough to lower the radius, you’ll notice that it can only be cut down to +10 miles.
This will capture people in cities like Thornton. And again, it doesn’t mean that these people live in Denver (or Boulder or Thornton). They may have simply been in any of those cities recently.
3. Location Expansion
Meta rolled out a new feature last year that allows advertisers the option of reaching more people outside of a designated targeted area.
If you’ve selected a city or region, you will see the option to “Reach more people likely to respond to your ads.” In fact, it’s likely selected by default (you can uncheck the box to turn it off).
When checked, Meta will expand your targeting to show your ads “to people interested in your selected cities and regions, for example people showing intent to travel to these locations or make purchases there.”
This expansion will remain within the targeted country (it will not expand to reach people in Canada who are thinking about traveling to Denver, for example). But when checked, you will reach people who neither live in or have recently been in your selected location.
4. Organic Distribution
This is another big one. Advertisers will look at comments or likes on their ad and do some research on where these people are from. This approach is flawed for three primary reasons:
1. The location in someone’s profile may differ from where their phone indicates they were recently.
2. If within the same country, you may have checked the box to reach people who researched this location.
3. They may have seen your ad organically.
There is a LONG list of reasons someone might see your ad organically. It can be as simple as surfacing the post in their feed because a connection (whom you did explicitly target) engaged with it. But people do weird things and ads can be found (an example is through Ad Transparency).
The bottom line is this: You can’t automatically assume that you paid to reach all of the people who engaged with your ad since you may not have paid to reach some of the people who were exposed to it.
Verify with Breakdowns
If you suspect that you’re paying to reach people who neither live in or were recently in your targeted location (and you shouldn’t be because the checkbox to expand location targeting was off), I encourage you to make use of the Breakdown feature.
Using the Breakdown dropdown menu in Ads Manager, go down to Geography and select either “Country” or “Region.”
You can then see how your ad spend and results are distributed by location.
In most cases, you’re unlikely to discover anything out of the ordinary.
A Note on VPNs
We can’t ignore the very real possibility that you are paying to reach people who are not actually from the country they claim to be. While I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on VPNs, I assume that this could be an explanation.
People will use VPNs to disguise who they are or where they’re from. In theory, that could mean making it seem as though they live in the US even though they do not.
This is well outside of my expertise, so I won’t claim to know whether it’s something that Meta can or should control. But if you’re convinced you’re reaching people you shouldn’t be, it’s entirely possible that the explanation has nothing to do with Meta.
Other Exceptions
Of course, it is entirely possible that a very small portion of your budget will be spent on people who go beyond any of these explanations. Meta does acknowledge this.
The key portion is this:
Because these signals vary, complete accuracy cannot be guaranteed. You may occasionally see a small number of ad impressions, or even receive a message or lead, from outside of your location settings.
I wouldn’t see this as an “ah hah” moment that explains all of your suspicions. This is what would explain why a small number of impressions from outside your targeted area will appear when using the Breakdown by Geography.
But I wouldn’t expect it to be anything impactful.
Can It Be Controlled?
I’d love to share a detailed explanation here about how you can assure that your ads only reach the people you want to reach. Unfortunately, we’re not in a place of particularly strong advertiser control.
Can you limit your ads to only those living in a location if you’re a local business? No.
Can you limit your ads to only those traveling in a location if you’re in the travel or tourism industries? No.
I’ve seen some advertisers suggest a complicated geo-fencing strategy where you exclude everyone outside of a certain radius.
While this may seem to make sense in theory by excluding everyone who lives outside of your targeted location, it’s counterproductive because it will also exclude those living in your targeted location but traveling in the excluded area.
It’s worth trying if you’re running into major issues, but it’s certainly no magical solution.
Your primary focus should be in the areas you actually control:
- Ad creative mentioning the targeted area
- Ad copy calling out people from the targeted area
- Form fields emphasizing the people who are eligible by location
Your ad copy, creative, and form can work to attract the right audience or repel the wrong one. Since the algorithm will also learn from those who perform the action that you want, it’s possible that you can help mitigate location stray using copy and creative.
Your Turn
What strategies have you used to isolate your preferred location?
Let me know in the comments below!
The post 4 Reasons Meta Ads Reach People Outside of the Targeted Location appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.
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