I have benefited greatly from using specific regional ads, but I also run an overlapping country-wide ad to "fill in the gaps" in Google's system that may prevent a user from seeing a regional ad (i.e they have a rotating IP address that Google cannot associate with a certain city). All campaigns are exact copies of each other in respect to keywords. I have found recently that they country wide campaign is receiving more and more impressions, taking away the impressions from my regional campaigns. It's my understanding that Google will show the absolute most targeted ad, so even if my country campaign's keyword bids are higher, my regional ads should show-this is not the case. Can anyone shed some light?
Hmm. never thought about it. Good point mate. This may be why my ads pay less than they did 2 years ago.
So would you be thinking that the level of geographical targeting would be a factor in the QS, and that Google is choosing the 'version' of the keyword with the highest QS from the different campaigns, in the same way that it does with different Adgroups (and different keywords within the same Adgroup)? Sounds sensible...
The way it was explained to me at one point by a rep was; You're bidding on "keyword" in two campaigns within the same account. One is targeted to USA and the other to Wisconsin. The USA campaign has the higher QS. If someone in WI searches for "keyword" the USA campaign will trigger the ad, not the WI campaign. Never tested it. It sounded logical when they explained it so I just went with it.
Sounds reasonable - as I say, it's what I assume that they do with different Adgroups. For example, if Adgroup 1 has "New Ford" in it, and Adgroup 2 has "Ford Mondeo" (both on Phrase Match), and somebody searches for "New Ford Mondeo", then it has to choose between equally good keywords (unless it looks at the QS). No reason why it can't do the same thing between campaigns...