Geography targeting

 

Important: Beginning in September 2025, advertisers using Display & Video 360 will be asked to declare if they intend to run political advertising for the European Union (EU). All line items created after September 8th will include options for EU political ads, with mandatory declarations using "Yes” and “No" buttons.

If you declare “Yes”, restrictions will automatically apply after the new policy launches on September 22, 2025, and the line items will not serve in the EU.

 

The geography targeting option in Display & Video 360 features two types of location-based targeting options: regional targeting and proximity targeting. Both types of targeting can be used at the same time.

Regional targeting

Use regional targeting to search for states, cities, and zip codes. You can also click then paste in a list of line separated zip codes.

Proximity targeting

Use proximity targeting to search for business chains, individual points of interest (POIs), street addresses, and latitude/longitude coordinates. You can also paste in a line separated list of street addresses and latitude/longitude coordinates. Location list targeting is not available for YouTube & partners line items.

• Search for a chain store, then choose a region. Region can narrow to: country, state, city, or zip code. Business chain targeting is not available for YouTube & partners line items.
• Search for a street address or POI. For example, "Wembley Stadium, London"

Add street addresses or latitude and longitude coordinates in bulk

Birdland, 315 W 44th St, New York, NY 10036, USA
Sydney Opera House, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Wembley, HA9 0WS, UK
40.7505045,-73.9956274
40.8296426,-73.9283632
48.8606111,2.3354553

• Click then paste a line separated list where each line represents one location.
• Locations can be a mix of street addresses and latitude/longitude coordinates.
• Street addresses must be recognized by Google Maps.
• Each pasted list is limited to 1000 locations. Repeat the bulk add process to import more.
• Latitude, longitude coordinates must be in decimal degrees format. You can get the coordinates of a place from Google Maps. Learn more

Proximity Radius

After you add a location, you can edit the target radius in miles or kilometers. By default, the target radius is 20 mi.

Note: Allowed proximity radius is relative to population density to maintain user privacy. The minimum radius is 1 kilometer and must contain a population of at least 1,000 to meet the privacy standards.

Radius reporting

After you have selected the location, the radius distance can’t be changed and the reports will only cover that area. If a targeted entity contains multiple locations such as a business chain with multiple sites or a list of locations, the report will show the results for the entity as a whole and won’t specify for each individual location within the list for that entity.

An example of this would be a location list for a business that has 3 locations, the report would show the data for the single business entity and not individualized data for each of the 3 locations. Since reporting on individual locations within a list isn’t available, the list entity will be reported as a single location regardless of the amount of sub-locations within the location list.

Advertiser-level location lists

Advertiser location lists are good for when you target the same locations frequently.

1. Navigate to your advertiser Resources Location Lists.
2. Click Create New.
3. Choose Regional Targeting (for postal codes) or Proximity Targeting (for individual points of interest).
4. Name your list, and then paste in up to 10,000 line separated postal codes (regional) or 10,000 street addresses or latitude/longitude pairs (proximity).
   1. For Regional Targeting, you can enter postal codes/DMAs with their accompanying two-letter country code to specify the correct location when a postal code may apply to multiple countries. For example, "11206, US," "11206 US," "US 11206," and "US, 11206" will all resolve to the correct US ZIP code.
5. Click Save.

Your location list will then be found via search in regional or proximity geography targeting.

About required disclosures

EU Political ads

Starting from September 8th, if you create a new line item in Display & Video 360, you’ll be asked to declare whether you intend to run political ads for the European Union (EU). You must choose “Yes” or “No” to save the line item. If you declare “Yes” for the line item, beginning September 22, 2025, it won’t serve in the European Union (EU).

If you edit location targeting for an existing line item, you’ll be asked to declare if you plan to run European Union (EU) political ads. You must choose “Yes” or “No” to save the line item.

If you want to change your political ads declaration at the line item level after setting it, you can do so at any time. After previously setting it to “Yes” or “No” from “None”, you can’t change it back to “None”, and can only select “Yes” or “No”.

You can also declare if you plan to run European Union (EU) political ads at the advertiser level, from Advertiser settings > Basic details > EU political ads. When "No" is selected, new line items will default "No" for the question that asks if this line item has political ads. If it's the first time you're making a selection at the Advertiser level, selecting "No" will also update all existing line items. If you want to change the political ads declaration at the line item level, you can do so at any time.

Note: It can take up to 6 hours for the setting to be applied to all existing line items.

If you want to duplicate a line item, insertion order, or campaign, the line items being duplicated must have a valid EU political ads declaration. You can set the EU political ads declaration in multiple ways:

• From the line item level: If your EU political ads declaration is set to either “No” or “Yes” at the line item level, duplicated line items will inherit the declaration from the source line item.
• From the advertiser level: If the source line item lacks a valid EU political ads declaration and if your EU political ads declaration is set to “No” at the advertiser level, all newly duplicated line items will pre-fill the declaration as “No”. You can change this at any time.

Note: Currently, duplication will fail if the source line item declaration is unavailable or if advertiser level declaration is unavailable or set to “Yes”. After September 22, 2025, you will be able to duplicate line items and set an EU political ads declaration in bulk.

Troubleshooting

• If you can't find a specific location you're looking for in the regional targeting option, try searching for it in proximity targeting or vice versa.
• Use the "Geography" section of the Troubleshooter for your line items to verify the countries you’re targeting match the impressions that came in for each country. You can use this information to adjust your targeting as needed. Learn more
• If your report shows "N/A", then that means Display & Video 360 could not determine a particular geographic dimension based on the user's IP address.
• Comparing Geographical location reporting between Display & Video 360 and other platforms such as Campaign Manager or third-party platforms may show discrepancies. Display & Video 360 reports are based on the data received in the bid request at bid time, Campaign Manager 360 however reports on data received at serving time which can differ. Comparisons with third-party reporting platforms will likely lead to discrepancies due to different methodologies used in defining the location.

Limitations

• You can create up to 1,000 proximity and 1,000 regional location lists (2,000 total).
• A line item is limited to 10,000 targeted locations, with the exception of business chains. A targeted location list counts as 1 of the 10,000 and each line item can target up to 2 location lists in total.
• Line items in some locations may have restrictions on ad content due to regional regulations:
  • Starting in October 2025, you won't be able to run most types of political advertising in the European Union (EU) through Google platforms. This restriction applies to line items in the EU even if they contain a mix of political ads and other ads. Learn more.
• Business chain and location list targeting are not available for YouTube & partners line items.
• Inventory Availability Report and the Reach Widget are only available for business chain locations. They are unavailable for custom locations like street addresses and POIs.
• If a line item doesn’t use geography targeting, you may see values of “Unknown” for location-based dimensions in reports that include that line item. Additionally, if you're using proximity targeting, you may see "Unknown" in reporting for dimensions like zip codes as the zip codes may not fulfill the privacy standards required based on size and population density.
• If you're using zip code targeting for YouTube line items, the DMA dimension will show as "Unknown".
• If you're also using day & time targeting, "Local" timezones only work with individual regional or business chain targeting options from the line-item level. It does not work with proximity targeting or advertiser-level regional location lists.
• Advertiser-level location lists
  • Not available for YouTube on Display & Video 360
  • 10k postal codes per list
  • Limited to Postal code and DMA only
  • Targeting only available at the line item level
  • Day & time targeting with local timezone does not work with regional location lists
• Some Postal Code or locations will not be available, this may be due to the population density of the area falling below minimum required levels to meet privacy standards, which require a targeted area of at least 3 square kilometers and a population of 1,000.
• Household income targeting can’t be combined with location lists.