When creating campaigns on TrafficJunky, you have powerful targeting features at your disposal. One of the said features is the Zip / Postal code targeting feature.
Let’s look at how this feature can help you set up clear-cut campaigns and give you that granular effect in your targeting.
Japan Within Your Reach
We are very excited to announce that Japan is now the newest country added to the Zip/Postal code targeting feature. You can target specific regions and/or cities in Japan to achieve that smooth targeting and zoom in on your target audience. If you have a particular interest in Japan, you will focus and choose a particular niche to target or supply its demand.
You can now use the Zip/Postal code targeting the United States, Canada, and Japan. This feature comes not only with precise specificity but also with great opportunities when combined with other features.
Adding a Geolocation to Campaign(s)
With the TJ DSP, a campaign is limited to one country and can have up to 10 regions and/or cities added to it.
Based on the country of your choice, you will be able to include or exclude specific regions or cities. Please keep in mind that you will only be able to do so if you select a country at the start. This is to say that it is doable to choose only regions or cities from a certain country without targeting the country.
For example, we can target Alberta, Quebec, and British Columbia without targeting Canada. This would look like this:
You will notice that in this case, we are targeting specific regions within Canada. This means that we only want these regions to be included in our campaign. You will also notice that we defined only one layer in this example. We can also have one layer made purely out of cities instead of regions, as mentioned above.
Let’s look at another example. We are going to target Canada as our country. We will target cities or regions, adding a second layer for the targeting we want to achieve. Here’s what that would look like:
The difference between the first example and the second is the option to include or exclude regions and/or cities. This second layer is more precise than then the one that precedes it.
In this example, we will be targeting 3 regions and a city in Canada for our campaign, which is precise compared to targeting Canada as a whole.
We can also add a third layer to make the targeting more clean-cut. This would look something like this:
In this case, we are targeting 3 regions and a specific city within a fourth region. The more layers you add, the more granular your targeting becomes.
The include / exclude option works in a very straightforward way. Let’s look at our third example. It can be read as this campaign is targeting Alberta, Nunavut, Ontario, and only Montreal within Quebec. If we were to exclude Montreal, it would read as this campaign targets Alberta, Nunavut, Ontario, and all cities within Quebec but Montreal.
When defining your layers, make sure that your insertion order makes sense, and it always goes from broad to specific to ensure that your targeting is well defined.
Adding Zip/Postal Codes
As we mentioned earlier, you will be able to activate Zip/Postal code targeting if the country you have selected is:
- Canada
- Japan
- United States
After selecting your targeting location(s), you can activate the feature to include or exclude specific Zip/Postal codes. You will have up to 100 Zip/Postal codes to add. It is important to notice that this feature applies to the country level. You can add Zip/Postal codes either one by one, or you can add several ones separated by a comma.
Since typing a long list can be a bit uncomfortable, here is how you can obtain a list of commas separated values using Regexr. To do so, please follow these steps:
- Put your values in a single column on a spreadsheet.
- Copy the values
- Go to Regexr.com
- In the Expression text field, type: \n
- In the Text field, paste your values.
- In the Tools text field, type comma (,)
- Copy the values provided in the field that comes after it
Paste them in the Zip/Postal code
Applications of Location Targeting & Zip/Postal Code
If you have been following along, you should understand how the features work and how you can start using them within your campaigns. Let’s tackle some interesting use cases where these two features will be put into action.
A/B Testing target audience
Precision is only valuable when conversions are observable. It matters not that your targeting can hit a grain of sand. If you cannot drive conversions, then it can all be to waste.
A/B testing is one of the applications where location and Zip/Postal code targeting shines the most. Since we are doing A/B testing, the main variable we will be changing is location, precisely the scope of targeting.
When running campaigns, you can have a target market or a niche you want to target. But, if you do not know your niche, it can be challenging to drive high conversions.
If you are running a campaign targeting a specific city and there seems to be good traffic and conversions coming through, you might want to know where your audience is exactly in the city. For instance, you can use this information to run very exact retargeting campaigns.
One way to achieve that is to combine the Zip/Postal code targeting with location targeting to lock defined areas within a city. Think of it as building granular campaigns.
For instance, you can duplicate your campaign and change the region or the city for more precise targeting. If you keep iterating and evaluating traffic, you will hit the bull’s eye. In other words, you will be able to find which region and city within a country or a region are driving traffic and conversions.
Moreover, you can go deeper with the Zip/Postal codes. Once you find your target cities, you can follow the same procedure to find specific areas within the cities that drive traffic and conversions.
This A/B testing method allows you to go from a very general audience to a specific niche.
Retargeting & Fallback Campaigns
Using the output of the A/B testing method described above, you can use the retargeting feature to recapture the audience that you could not convert into customers. These retargeting campaigns are exact and will yield a high ROI.
Fallback campaigns can also be set in place as a safety precaution. What this means is that you can set a general campaign to run. This campaign will try to capture traffic when your main campaigns stop doing so. Even if your targeting is exact, external factors might affect traffic. This will allow you always to capture traffic until you re-adjust your campaigns.
Fallback campaigns can also be combined with retargeting campaigns to capture that temporary audience you got when your main campaigns were down.
Targeting Regions for Specific Industries
Another benefit you can reap from the location targeting is targeting individual markets with great precision. Certain markets operate under geo-restrictions or are limited, to a certain extent, to specific locations.
The cannabis market is a good case in point for geo-restricted industries. If you are a dispensary or any other business operating in the said market, promoting your services would not necessarily be easy. There are many restrictions on advertising, making the ability to target location with great flexibility far-reaching.
To illustrate, using our location targeting and the Zip/Postal code targeting, you will be able to target the audience within your city and zoom down using the Zip/Postal code for neighborhoods.
Please note we have our own regulations for cannabis advertising, which are separate from that of states. If you would like to know more about cannabis advertising, you can read our comprehensive article about it.
As far as industries are limited to specific locations, we would take the online gaming industry as an example, specifically Hentai games. While the Manga industry has penetrated several markets, Hentai games have not caught up yet. To generalize, any cultural-related advertising would work best if your campaigns target said culture(s).
Demographics Targeting
While using our location targeting feature is powerful per se, combining it with other targeting features yields greater results. For the sake of simplicity, we will admit that socioeconomic factors fall under demographics segmentation.
Location Targeting & Language Targeting
Combining location targeting with the Browser Language targeting will allow you to target specific groups within a country, region, or city. To exemplify, you will be able to target Spanish-speaking individuals living in California. You can also target the French community living in Japan.
As such, if you have services/products related to a specific country, you can still take advantage of natives living abroad. This targeting technique will also help you take advantage of a look-alike audience. Here is what this means. If you are targeting the French-speaking community in Japan, you might also be targeting French Canadians or any other community where French is their first or second language. However, it is worth noting that these communities, despite having a language in common, might display different economic behavior, I.e., purchase behavior.
You can also use location targeting with gender targeting to target a certain gender living in a specific country, region, or city. You can add Browser Language targeting to slice the target thinner as to have a niche.
Experimenting with these three combinations will outturn not only great precision but also great results. Precision, to reiterate, comes with high ROI, conversions, and efficiency and effectiveness for your cost of media.
Income Status
Finally, you can combine location targeting, Zip/Postal code targeting to audiences with a certain income status. Modern urban design, specifically the grid planning, which is adopted in Noth America, I.e., the United States and Canada segments cities in such a way that neighborhoods are easy to recognize. This segmentation gives birth due to socio-economic reasons (income inequality is a major factor) and urban development to inequal neighborhoods inhabited by individuals that belong to a certain income range.
Research has been written, and modern data analysis techniques have been used to explain this phenomenon, which you can use for exact targeting. Combining this technique with gender and Browser Language targeting will allow you to handpick your target audience for lack of a better term.
It is worth mentioning that extensive research about capita distribution and the effect of income status will be required before attempting to use this targeting technique. While most of the major cities in North America were built using the grid plan, others were built based on a different plan.
The location targeting feature is a great weapon in your targeting arsenal. While extremely effective alone, combining this feature with other targeting features will allow you to achieve more thorough targeting that would allow you to maximize your ROI and increase your conversions.
