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Comment by C4stor | Hacker News Reader

The fact the google ads doesn't allow to do a real location targeting but will show ads to anyone "interested" in that location is usually a non-starter for me.

Having people all over the world shown an ad for a specifically localized shop ? No thanks !

For more online businesses, the results are indeed quite decent !

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It's my understanding that -- sadly -- "interested in location" is the default. But you can switch it to only users in or from the location.

I manually exclude every single area around the world that I don't want to advertise in. This is the only real way to get rid of bad clicks from out of the area. Especially since the ads I run cost around $25 a click...

Last time I checked it was entirely possible to enable real location targeting. However in some situations, the default “interested in a location” makes sense even for brick and mortar stores. For example when purchasing ideas and/or decisions for seniors are made by their far away children. Like anything, it depends on the exact situation including the expense of the ad click and the likelihood of it being a remote decision helper.

For what it's worth, I've been enticed to visit a place based on an online ad targeting a future vacation destination before. Not saying real location targeting would be more or less effective, but rather that location interest targeting can be effective.

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