Geotargeting on Project Wonderful is only a few days old, and in that time a few questions about it have landed in our inbox more often than others. We thought it might help to put the answers to these questions here, in case you’ve been wondering them too!

I’ve approved some new bids on my ad box, but I don’t see them when I visit my site. Why?

That’s because if you’re looking at your site, you’ll only see the ads for the region that you’re in right now! If you’ve approved ads for another region, you can see those bids in two ways. The first is on your ad box’s information page, found by clicking your “your ad here” text or by clicking on the icon next to each ad box on your My ad boxes page. The other is, of course, by looking at the list of winning bids on your Bids on my ad box page!

The average bid in the US region of my ad box is dropping. Am I losing income?

Most likely not! When we introduced the geotargeting, all existing bids and campaigns were set to the US region, and all traffic prior to the update was credited to the US region.  So, the average bid for your entire ad box was initially being attributed to the US region.

Traffic is now being tracked in all regions, so bids are being distributed accordingly. While the average bid in the US region is dropping, you’ll notice that the average bid in other regions is rising. The average bid for your entire ad box should be at about the same level it has always been — and hopefully even higher! With geotargeting, earnings per ad box are up across the network.

Bids are appearing on my ad box for less than my minimum bid. What’s going on?

When we introduced the geotargeting, all existing bids and campaigns were set to the US region, and all traffic prior to the update was credited to the US region.  This was done because regional traffic data wasn’t previously stored, and the US is our main source of page views!

When it came to minimum bids, we figured if that you already had a minimum bid of, say, $1, you wouldn’t want to see that minimum duplicated across the new regions — that would mean that your minimum bids across all four regions would add up to $4, four times what it was the day before! We also didn’t want to split your minimum bid across the regions, because then your minimum bid on US traffic would be suddenly reduced, and that wouldn’t make many people happy. Rather than try to guess how each publisher would want the minimum split, minimum bids on your ad boxes were also set to the US region, and haven’t been copied to the new regions. As such, the bids you’re seeing for less than your minimum bid are on the new regions.

But it’s easy to update! You can shift your minimum bids across regions by going to My ad boxes→”Edit”→”Minimum bids”. Different minimum bids can be set for each region.

I’m the high bidder on a site, but someone else’s ad is appearing there when I visit. What’s going on?

When you’re visiting a site, you’ll only see the ads for the region you’re right now, even if your ad is for another region.  But you can see the winning bids for all regions on each ad box’s information page, found by the icon next to each bid on your My bids page! You can also sort your bids by region there too, so you’ll always be certain when and where your ad is appearing.

I don’t really care where my visitors come from. How do I target everyone?

Good news: the default behaviour of the site is designed specifically for advertisers like you, who want to reach anyone, anywhere!

The publisher search returns summed traffic across all regions, just like before, unless you specify otherwise. So you’ll be seeing the same traffic numbers and site statistics that you were seeing before geotargeting! On the bidding page you can enter a single maximum bid for whatever regions you’re interested in, and the default is all of them! If you’re not seeing this option, make sure that the “Add traffic together” checkbox, located just above the charts, is checked off. But again, if you’re searching with the default options, it’s already checked off for you!

Our system will split your maximum bid across regions for you and display the results on your bid confirmation screen, where you can edit them if you want. All four bids will be placed at the same time, so you don’t have to go through the bid process four times for each ad box. The result is geotargeted bids, across regions, without having to do any more work!

My old bids are currently in the US region, but I want to reach every visitor. How do I reset my bids to apply everywhere?

While each bid applies to only one region, it’s really easy to convert an existing bid into multiple bids that span across regions! Just go to My bids and click on the “edit” link next to the bid you want to change. Look under the flags in the region settings section, and click the blue “duplicate it across regions” link!

The maximum bid you had set on the original bid will be intelligently splits across all of the regions for the ad box. You’ll have a chance to review the split and make any changes before the new bids are placed.

When I try to place my bid everywhere and let Project Wonderful decide my regional bids, some regions are getting excluded. Why?

When you place a single maximum bid across all regions, we’ll split that maximum bid across the regions you’ve chosen for you and display the result on the confirmation screen for you. The split is determined by the relative traffic in each region. But, if one or more regions do not have enough traffic relative to the total to justify at least a bid of $0.01/day, the system won’t place a bid there.

The split is displayed on a confirmation page before your bid is finalized, so you can go back and make changes if you would like to split the bid differently and include one of those dropped regions.

Does geotargeting mean that ads will now cost me 4x as much?

It doesn’t, although this was a common reaction when geotargeting first went up and people noticed the US region’s current bids were about the same price as the current bids on the entire ad box before. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the overall traffic on a site hasn’t changed. Since this is one of the main factors people consider when setting their bids, advertisers aren’t going to be willing to pay four times as much for the same amount traffic!

If you’re familiar with how stock splits work, then you likely already understand how the prices are going to adjust. If not, we’ll explain what we mean!

Let’s say a site’s traffic breaks down as being the majority (50%) come from the US, only 1% from Canada, 25% from Europe, and 24% from everywhere else. Now, let’s say that, before geotargeting, you were bidding $1/day there. Sure, on day one of geotargeting your bid in the US region was still set to $1/day — the same was true for everyone’s bids! But, as a rational advertiser, are you really going to keep paying full price for half the traffic? Probably not, and you probably also aren’t going to pay $1/day for that tiny 1% sliver of Canadian traffic either.

Instead, as advertisers log in and update their bids, prices in each region will shift. As an advertiser aiming to pay the same price for the entire ad box’s traffic, your bids are going to be $0.50/day in the US, $0.01/day in Canada, $0.25/day in Europe and $0.24/day in the elsewhere region.

This analysis, of course, ignores the fact that some advertisers are going to be willing to pay a premium to reach an audience in a particular single region. If you’ve got a product that only ships to the United States, for example, US traffic is worth way more to you than European traffic. So while prices will rise a bit in the new regions, there’s no way it’s going to be anything as dramatic as paying full price for each new region!

That covers most of it! If you’ve got any questions that we haven’t addressed here, or any feedback at all, please do drop us a line. And thanks again for being Project Wonderful members!