Location Group Targeting Enhancements

Expand Location Groups by reaching visitors based on past visitation. 

For more information on building Location Groups in general, please refer to the Location Manager help page. 

Through our expanded targeting functionality in Location Manager, you can now extend reach based on users' past visitation to your custom Location Group through Audience or Neighborhood targeting.  

Using Audience and Neighborhood targeting for Location Groups involves 2 steps. First, you will need to enable the building of Audiences and Neighborhood for the Location Group by enabling the BUILD option in Location Manager. Second, you will need to choose the same Location Group for Audience (or Neighborhood) targeting when setting up a campaign in Ads Manager. Both steps are outlined in more detail below.

Step 1 - Building Audience & Neighborhood for Location Groups in Location Manager

Build button:

Visit Location Manager and go to the edit page of a Location Group. The Build button is available on the right side of each location group, as shown below:

Screenshot 1 - shows the 'Build Targeting' option to the right of each Location Group from within Location Manager.

Once you've finalized the Location Group, click on the build button to enable Location Audience and Neighborhood targeting. It takes up to 24 hours (after you initiate the build) to fully enable targeting in Ads Manager. You can build Audience & Neighborhood for existing Location Groups as well. 

Please note: You do not need to wait for the Audience & Neighborhoods to be ready to build your campaign for targeting. 

Process Status:

When you enable the building of Audiences or Neighborhood, you will be able to see the status of this operation on the main page of Location Manager as well on the edit page for a specific Location Group. The possible status values are as follows:

Audience status:

The following are the statuses of Location Audiences within Location groups. 

• Status - Not built
  • In this case, click into the Location Group to build a Location Audience for this Location Group
• Status - Building
  • In this case, Location Audience for this Location Group is enabled and is currently being built. This process usually takes up to 24 hours.
• Status - Updating
  • In this case, Location Audience for this Location Group is currently being updated after a recent change. This process usually takes up to 24 hours. You can still use the Location Group for Location Audience targeting using the previous settings of the Location Group.
• Status - Ready
  • In this case, Location Audience targeting for this Location Group is now enabled. Go to Ads Manager to use this targeting option.
• Status - Expired
  • In this case, Location Audience for this Location Group is disabled due to the inactivity of the Location Group. To re-build a Location Audience for this group, either click into the Location Group to build Location Audience for this Location Group again or simply use the Location Group to reactive.

Neighborhood Status:

The following are the status of possible Neighborhoods for this Location group. 

• Status - Not built
  • In this case, click into the Location Group to build Neighborhoods for this Location Group
• Status - Building
  • In this case, Neighborhoods for this Location Group are currently being built. This process usually takes up to 24 hours.
• Status - Updating
  • In this case, Neighborhoods for this Location Group are currently being updated after a recent change. This process usually takes up to 24 hours. You can still use the Location Group for Neighborhood targeting using the previous settings of the Location Group.
• Status - Ready
  • In this case, Neighborhood targeting for this Location Group is now enabled. Go to Ads Manager to use this targeting option.
• Status - Expired
  • In this case, Neighborhood for this Location Group is disabled due to inactivity of the Location Group. To re-build Neighborhoods for this group, either click into the Location Group to build Neighborhoods for this Location Group again or simply use the Location Group to reactive.

Pro tip: Hover over the info icons (next to the Audience Status and Neighborhood Status columns) to view more info.

Step 2 - Using Location Group for Audience and Neighborhood targeting in Ads Manager:

To enable Audience or Neighborhood targeting of your Location Group in Ads Manager, select Target by Audience or Target by Neighborhood when building a new campaign in Ads Manager.

The Location Group will be available as a header for selection in the search boxes after you have initiated the build of Audience and Neighborhood in Location Manager.

Note: you don't have to wait for Status = Ready to set up a campaign for targeting as long as the building has been enabled from within Location Manager (Status = Building). 

Below is a screenshot showing how to select a Location Group for Audience targeting appears within the Target by Audience section in Ads Manager.

 Screenshot 3 - above screenshot shows a user searching for 'Location Group 0' in the audience section of an ad group and finding that there is a matching Location Group enabled.

Once you have selected the Location Group in the Audience (or the Neighborhood) section, you can continue with the rest of the ad group setup.

Possible Warnings 

In some cases, the system will provide a warning and guidance on next steps. The list of all possible warnings are below:

1. Let's say you added a Location Group in the Audience section of Ads Manager

   1. If the current status of Location Group is ‘Building’, then you will see the following message (which gives appropriate next steps):

   1. "Location Audience for this Location Group is not yet ready. It is currently being built. Please check back in 24 hours. If you think 24 hours have passed since you started building audiences for this Location Group, please contact your account manager for assistance."

   2. If the status of the Location Group is ‘Updating, then you will see the following message (which gives appropriate next steps)

   1. "Location Audience for this Location Group is currently updating after your recent change to the Location Group. You can use the Location Group right now but the changes in Location Audience (due to recent changes in the Location Group) will take up to 24 hours to get reflected."

   3. If the status of Location Group is ‘Expired’, then you will see the following message (which gives appropriate next steps)

   1. "Location Audience for this Location Group has expired and will need to be rebuilt again. Save the ad group to initiate a rebuild. Location Audience will be ready and automatically activated for this ad group within 24 hrs."

2. Similar warnings (and next steps) are provided for Neighborhood as well.