Whether you manage your AdWords account in-house or you have an agency managing your paid search account, your ads could be serving to users in foreign countries. Chances are that you won’t be generating too many leads in Vietnam, Brazil, or Thailand.

Do You See What I See?
A recent audit of an account managed by a local industry-leading digital marketing agency revealed improper geo-targeting was responsible for 5-8% of wasted spend per month. Ads were being served in 207 foreign countries (see the map below).

A full 1% of ad spend was being squandered in Indonesia. In just 6 months, on a $10,000/mo budget, you would have spent enough to buy a round-trip plane ticket from San Diego to Indonesia.

How Does This Happen?
The AdWords default and recommended setting for location targeting is “People in, searching for, or who show interest in my targeted location.” Google explains this as being anyone who is likely in your targeted location or has shown interested in your targeted location through their web browsing habits. What they don’t explain is that you may end up advertising to users outside of the United States if you use this setting.

There are campaigns where this type of targeting makes sense, but you really have to be on top of your game to make it work as intended. It doesn’t matter if you “outcare the competition” if you aren’t on top of your PPC game.

Final Words
We only discussed the issue of wasted international spend in this article. The reality is that if you have this geo-targeting problem internationally, then you are probably wasting even more money nationally (assuming your service area is not the entire United States).

Stratiform offers PPC Account Audit services to uncover mistakes like these and many more. Reach out today to discuss how we can help!