PPC Expert Location Targeting

Are You Targeting Israel on Google Ads, But Not Getting The Traffic You Expected?
This Might Be The Reason Why. 

The Problem

The borders of Israel & the Palestinian territories have been a topic of debate for a number of decades now, to put it mildly. However, when it comes to commerce and industry, many of us on all sides of the lines want the same things. Moreover, for many businesses, if it’s worth advertising in one part of the region, then it may be worth advertising in the others.

The complex part of this situation is the fact that many people have terms for parts of Israel that may or may not be agreed upon and universally accepted. When it comes to advertising, it is important to know the areas as they are defined by your advertising platform. Politics aside, you want to reach your target audience.

The Solution

Google Ads allows you to target and exclude targeting based on location. When targeting in Israel, there are a number of options.

You can choose to target “Israel”. This will target a large part of the country, but it will exclude Judea and Samaria/ Palestine and the Gaza Strip.

You can choose to target “Israel” and “Palestine” and this will target the same portion as above and in addition, the area of the west bank territories as well as the Gaza Strip. (There is no option to target the Gaza Strip alone).

There is a third option to target “Israel” and “Judea and Samaria” and this will fill in all the West Bank area, but not include the Gaza Strip.

Case in Point

One example of a company that needs to be aware of this targeting is the major supermarket chain, Rami Levy. Rami Levy has branches both in the area that is universally referred to as Israel and in the area that many people call Judea and Samaria or the West Bank territories. And they serve the population that lives in all areas of the region.

If Rami Levy is having a general promotion for everyone who wants to buy food at a reasonable price, then they would want to target in all the areas where they maintain branches. However if they were to run a special celebrating the Muslim holiday of Ramadan or the Jewish Holiday of Shavuot, they might choose to focus their targeting more specifically.

Additional Notes

Another point worth noting is that Google Ads generally allows for even more focused targeting – on the city level. If you want to advertise a new business location or promotion only in Haifa or Tel Aviv, you can do that. There are many cities in Israel that can be individually targeted. However, within the areas of both Palestine and Judea and Samaria, there are no defined cities that can be individually targeted.

This will also affect the information you can see in Google Analytics. You can view users to your website by country and by city, however for the Palestinian cities, Google Analytics will show you only “(not set)”.

Bonus Tip

Of course a great digital marketing agency should have a few tricks up their sleeves to get you the exact targeting you want, even if it doesn’t fit into the parameters set by Google.

For example radius targeting –

If you want more information about what our digital marketing agency can do for you, contact us today!