Geotargeting is to display a website content to a specifically identified geographical area (Pierre Far, 2008). One of the methods of geotargeting is to utilize an IP address database; when a user requests a page of a server, the server refers to a database of worldwide IP address for a user’s IP address (2008). The database identifies the geographical location such as the country or city of the user’s IP address, and it informs the server about that (2008). Another method is to utilize zip/postal code (Family Business Institutes, Inc., 2008). When a user signs up an online service or offer, it usually requires the user to provide his or her contact information, so the user’s geographical location will be identified with that information (2008).
An online advertising campaign requires geotargeting when the campaign is targeted at the market of specific geographic region (2008). Since people around the world can access the online advertising, the campaign cannot be reach to its target market effectively and efficiently without geotargeting (2008). Adam Posman, who is a strategic planner with BAM Strategy, remarks that advertisements that attract the audience in one area will not usually work effectively in another area (2000). Thus, geotargeting should be implemented in order to develop a geotargeted advertisement. Posman also states that geotargeted advertising placements allow a marketer to market his or her standardized product to specific geographical and cultural markets (2000).
Servers provide the tools that help their customers to implement geotargeting. For example, Google’s AdWords supports its users to implement geotargeting. Those users can define their specific geographic target market and the locations where their advertisements will be placed in the set up menu of AdWords (Google, 2008). Also, according to Nathania Johnson, Yahoo has obtained the Urban Mapping’s Urbanware (2008). Johnson states that Urbanware holds the data of “40,000 neighborhood boundaries covering more than 2,000 U.S. cities and towns” (2008). Yahoo can provide geotargeted results to its users based on search behaviour with Urbanware (2008). Since those results are geotargeted, those results are more relevant, appropriate, complete, and valuable to those users (2008).
Therefore, geotargeting is important when a marketer creates a campaign targeting at the market of specific geographical area. Some major servers such as Google and Yahoo! provide the services that help their users to implement geotargeting, so a marketer can use their services to implement geotargeting effectively.
