A great new Project Wonderful feature: geotargeting!
January 6, 2010 10:49 am geotargeting, new featuresWe’ve been busy these past few months, upgrading the network behind-the-scenes for our newest feature: geotargeting!
What is geotargeting?
Geotargeting allows you to target your ads to different areas of the planet. If you’re selling a product to Americans, you can now make sure only Americans see your ads. Or Canadians. Or Europeans, if you want. It’s pretty awesome.
How does it work?
When a reader loads a page with a Project Wonderful ad on it, we compare their IP address with our geodatabase, which matches country codes to IP address. Then we show them the appropriate ad for their region!
What are the benefits?
There’s several. As an advertiser, you can target your ads more effectively than before. As a publisher, you get more revenue streams, as well as different and distinct audiences to sell to publishers. And viewers of websites get ads that are more relevant to them, so that’s good too!
What’s changing?
There’s a few changes: most of them under-the-hood, but several that you’ll see. Each bid will now have a region associated with it! When you bid, you can choose to bid on one or more (or all!) of:
American traffic
Canadian traffic
European traffic
or traffic from everywhere else!
Where’d these regions come from?
We looked at a few factors: where our greatest audiences were in, and what distinctions would be the most useful for advertisers. The US/Canada division is a big one, and one that had been most often asked for from advertisers on both sides of the 49th parallel. Europe is another large block, with “everywhere else” taking up the rest.
While this new geotargeting won’t allow you to target, say, particular countries within Europe or particular provinces within Canada, it does allow you to target these larger groups in a way that’s convenient, simple, and that makes sense.
When is it happening?
We’re rolling over on Saturday, the 30th of January – just before the end of the month. That evening, Project Wonderful will be upgraded, and the next day, the 31st, the last day of January, will be the first day of New Improved Project Wonderful, now with geotargeting!
This sounds complicated. Is it complicated?
Nope! We’ve taken a lot of time to make sure our interface is actually as simple as possible. And if you’re not interested in geotargeting at all (and that’s fair!) you can ignore it and bid as before: searching will work the same way, and if you want to bid $10 a day on a site, we’ll automatically (and intelligently!) break that into regional bids for you, behind the scenes.
What do I have to do?
Nothing! After the rollover on Saturday, January 30th, you’ll be able to choose which regions you want your bids to be active in. Until then just sit tight, and be sure to come back here for more previews, tips and tricks about the new geotargeting features!
We’re announcing this feature well in advance for a few reasons: we didn’t want it to be a surprise, and we wanted all our members to be able to hit the ground running on January 31st. In the next few days we’ll not only show you what the updates look like, but we’ll be posting tutorials on how to bid with regions, tips and tricks on how to maximize your bidding, and so on.
Come back soon, and thanks for being Project Wonderful members!
(Oh – the sweet flag icons above were supplied by Icon Drawer – thanks guys!)
January 6th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
A simple question which might have a very complex answer: will these be targeted based on the readers, or based on the site? Because at least as PW goes right now, the bid is for all viewers of a site, not for individual viewers, right? But viewers for a single site can come from lots of places.
So basically, the only way I can see geotargeting working well is if you fundamentally change the way that PW bids work.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Hey fluffy!
It’s targeted based on the reader, not on the site. So you’re right, in that each site will now have four ads that can be displayed to readers: one to Americans, one to Canadians, one to Europeans, and one to the rest of us.
It’s not THAT fundamental a change and you’ll still be able to see which ad is the high bidder in each region. That should be previewed in the next few days!
January 6th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Okay, cool! That seems like some of the math behind the scenes can get a bit wonky but I’m sure you’ve thought this through much more than I have.
January 6th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Question: does this mean we can now have different house ads / “Your Ad Here” ads based on region, too?
Say, if I wanted to advertise my next convention appearance to American readers, but show International readers the ads to my online store since the odds are so low they’ll be able to go to the convention there’s no point showing them the same ad…
Also, what about different minimum bids for the different regions, since I assume that some regions will end up being worth more than others?
January 7th, 2010 at 4:51 am
You’ll have different minimum bids for each region, yep – it only makes sense, since they’ll probably perform differently!
We don’t actually have different “your ad here” default ads for each region, but it’s a great suggestion. For now a workaround would be to set your American convention appearance ad as the default, and then set your minimum bid on American traffic so high that this convention ad will be the only thing that’s displayed – in the meantime your other regions will be unaffected.
Hope this helps!
January 9th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
I agree with Rachel. For me, the geotargetting feature doesn’t seem like something I’ll need, unless I want to say “suspenders” in an ad but don’t want anybody thinking the British definition(or if I decide adding some local flavour/flavor to an ad would get more clicks), but geotargetting the Your Ad Here image sounds pretty useful, especially for conventions or if you don’t offer international shipping.
Although currently I use that function to display a link to vote for my comic on TopWebComics when bidding is down(and thus probably traffic).
January 9th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
But “targeting” doesn’t have a double-T?
January 10th, 2010 at 6:49 am
So it does! I’ve corrected the posts. Thanks!
January 10th, 2010 at 6:50 am
Garrett – it’s true, and it’s a good suggestion. Once this has launched we’ll be adding region-specific “your ad here” images. Thanks for the suggestion!
January 10th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Ah, I wasn’t sure if you were doing some funky branding thing. Like Krispy Kreme. Or Hammmbergerrs.
January 13th, 2010 at 11:40 am
@Rachel and @Garrett – we’ve had some extra time, so I pushed that “different your ad here images for different regions” task up, and it’ll launch with the new geotargeting code on January 30th.
Thanks for the great suggestion!
January 14th, 2010 at 4:29 am
Awesome!
Although I’m curious if it will split the competition for advertisers and will result in a lower income for publishers.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:10 am
@Frank – it shouldn’t! We’ve got a blog post touching on these issues coming up. Thanks!
January 17th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Perhaps an opt out, and perhaps by site?
I know all my traffic (ok, 99%) is Australian.
So offering my advertisers the ‘other’ region isn’t going to encourage them to buy.
OK I can understand .au isn’t big enough to get its own region and I’m willing to see how it goes, but I suspect that an opt-out makes sense, because I’m expecting this to ruin the program for me.
January 17th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Hi Lea!
I wouldn’t expect this to ruin PW for you. If all your 99% of your traffic is Australian, then 99% of your traffic will be in the “everywhere else” region. Same hits, and presumably, same bid levels! I wouldn’t look at it as an “other” region when it’s got 99% of your traffic. For your audience and your advertisers, Europe, Canada and the States are the “other” region.
We’re also keeping up the referrer origin stats and charts we’ve already got, so it’ll still be clear that 99% of your traffic is from Australia.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Hm, Its so great tool! Its seem as to make specific target market, isn’t it? So then the publisher will get the proper potential consumers. I Thought… ^^