AdRotate – Geo-Targeting

Target your audience with geo targeting and show only the adverts they need to see or localize advertisement campaigns using this powerful feature! AdRotate Pro connects to external services. This data is based on the users IP Address and does not contain identifiable information but is very accurate for the user their location at that moment.

Enable Geolocation

Geo Targeting is not enabled by default. You’ll find a section called Geo Targeting in the AdRotate Pro Settings.

If you also enable advertisers to specify where their adverts will show up. They too can use the City/State and Country fields in their own dashboards.

Supported Geo Lookup services

AdRotate Pro currently supports MaxMind City, MaxMind Country, AdRotateGeo, CloudFlare & FreegeoIP.

MaxMind is a paid service, you’ll buy lookups from them directly. Links for that are in the AdRotate settings. MaxMind is very accurate and lists most IPs in the world.

AdRotate Geo is my own lookup service. This service is included with AdRotate Pro for free and requires a valid license activated on your site to use. AdRotate Geo uses MaxMinds GeoLITE database, which is slightly less accurate and not as complete as their paid offering.

AdRotate Geo – 30000 free lookups every day, uses GeoLite2 databases from MaxMind!
Supports: ipv4/ipv6, Countries, Cities, DMA codes, States and State ISO (3166-2) codes.
Scalability: Suitable for small to medium sized websites.

MaxMind GeoIP2 – The most accurate geo targeting available.
Supports: ipv4/ipv6, Countries, States, State ISO (3166-2) codes, Cities and DMA codes.
Scalability: Suitable for any size website as long as you have lookups.

CloudFlare IP Geolocation – Basic geolocation included in every CloudFlare account.
Supports: ipv4/ipv6, Countries.
Scalability: Suitable for any size website.

FreegeoIP – 15000 free lookups per hour, uses GeoLite2 databases from MaxMind!
Supports: ipv4, Countries, Cities, DMA codes, States and State ISO (3166-2) codes.
Scalability: Suitable for medium sized websites.

 

 

Groups

GeoLocation only works for groups. And each applicable group needs geo-targeting enabled.

You’ll see this checkbox in the advanced section of the group settings.  Make sure to check this box & save to enable geo-targeting in any group that you want to contain geo-targeted ads.

Configure Geo-Targeting on Individual Ads

 

GeoLocation only works for groups. But, the geo-targeting is set at the ad level. Once geo-targeting is turned on in your account, if you want to apply to an ad, go to AdRotate > Adverts, select the ad you want to update. Each ad now has a “Geo Targeting” options box.  In here, you’ll select the country, city, etc, that you want to target.  Set this up for the ads that you want geo-targeting to apply to. Then make those ads part of a group, and place that group wherever you want it to display on your site.

When creating adverts you’ll see a section with the geo targeting options.
In there you can either specify one or many cities or states. For cities you can use the name or Metro ID and for states you can use the state name or it’s ISO code. All names must be in english using the appropriate english version of the name.

Metro IDs are primarily used in the United States. In other countries they may not work or yield different results.

You can also select countries. The cities and states take priority. So your selection of countries is ignored if a city or state is matched first.

Recommended: Always have one fallback ad that does not have any geo-targeting per group, to make sure you are always showing an ad, in case a site visitors is located outside your target area.

Visitors from outside your target area

As a simple backup you can include one advert in your group that has no geo targeting enabled. When all ads are targeted at a specific location and one is not, that one will show as a sort of fallback. This prevents gaps and awkward emptiness on your site.