Smarter Google AdWords in KSA and Egypt

Google has announced the launch of city-level targeting for their AdWords across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

According to Google, advertisers in those 2 countries can now target their ads only to specific region, city or geographical location. It’s a powerful way to reach qualified prospects in the precise area where advertisers do business.

Google provides an example of a scenario for clarification:

For instance, Hassan who owns a restaurant in Cairo wants to target Cairo residents with the keyword “restaurant”. With region and city targeting, his ads may appear when a Google user in Cairo searches for “restaurant”. When Google users in Alexandria searches for the “restaurants”, Hassan’s ad will not appear. Google uses the user’s Internet Protocol (IP) address to determine the user’s location and to show Hassan’s ad.

This is great news for small and medium businesses like restaurants and stores that want to minimize the spillover of their advertising and maximize their click-through rate (CTR).

This move usually requires a detailed mapping of IP addresses per city/region which KSA and Egypt, in addition to the UAE and some other countries in the region have been implementing.