If you are a business owner who is advertising services on Facebook, you might have come across the problem of having your ads reaching people in WRONG countries.
The cause of this problem lies in the DEFAULT LOCATION settings for ad targeting.
This setting can lead to your ads being sent to entirely different countries, costing you money which will go to waste.
In this article, I’ll break down how Facebook handles the whole location targeting process, why your ads go to the wrong country, and what you can do to fix it.
⚡Also Read: Instagram Ads Wrong Country
Why Do Facebook Ads Target the Wrong Country?
Let’s look into the most important setbacks which Facebook ads run in wrong country:
Default Location Settings For Ads On Facebook
The default Facebook setting for location targeting is “includes people living in or recently in the location”.
Here’s why this is a problem.
When you select this option, as it clearly says, you will be sending ads to people in the location and numerous others who recently visited there.
Imagine you select a country like Malaysia, and think of the MILLIONS of people who live there PLUS the ones who have traveled in and out of the country in a month?
You will be sending ads to countless people who don’t even live there, and who will probably NEVER think of getting your services at all.
The ONLY good thing about this is if you provide services to people who ACTUALLY travel all the time.
⚡Also Read: List of Countries to Exclude from Facebook Ads
If you are a hotel owner, a restaurateur, or an owner of a local attraction, you might want to get the attention of tourists, businessmen, and backpackers.
So if you own something like this, please keep that option on.
VPN Users
When people use VPN, it changes their location entirely and this means their IP addresses change, and they are seen in a different area.
When this happens, people who are not in the location you advertise to, but are seen as in the area because of their VPN, will get your advertisements as well.
⚡Also Read: Access Denied On Facebook
This is NOT something you can really control, but you can mention in your advertisements that your services are LIMITED to a specific city.
This will make people outside the location who get the ads will NOT misunderstand and reach out to you afterwards.
What To Do If Facebook Ads Wrong Country
Do these two things and no one in a wrong country will ever see your ads:
Change To “People Living In This Location”
If you only want to advertise to people who live there, and NOT countless people who DON’T, just pick “people living in this location”, option when you’re setting location on Facebook ads.
This will make sure that the ad reaches people who currently live there.
You MUST understand that the ad targeting will NOT be 100% accurate, but this will make your audience much more manageable than the former option.
And you will also save money in the long run as well!
Location Exclusion
If you are getting too many people from a specific location, you can also try excluding locations.
Basically this means manually excluding locations around your target region when setting the options on Facebook.
You will find the option to exclude locations in the ad targeting section.
Simply type in the areas (bordering countries, towns, etc) what you want to exclude and your ads will NOT reach these areas.
How Does Facebook Location Target Ads
Facebook usually looks into the details it collects from the accounts, and the network connections of its users.
It MOSTLY looks into the city they’re in at the moment (from their profile), the IP address they are using and the data they get from the service provider they have.
It also looks at the collective data from the location of a user’s friends.
This gives Facebook a rough idea of where a user can be at the given moment, but this ALSO comes with certain setbacks.
⚡Also Read: Why am I getting bad ads on Facebook?
For example, not EVERY user updates their current location on their profile. They might forget to, or refuse to for privacy. And this might also be the same for their friends as well.
Also, they might have their location services turned off, or masked by a VPN, which will list their location in a different country entirely.
This can also confuse the platform in targeting people in specific locations.
Quick Recap
Facebook ad targeting can NEVER be completely accurate when it comes to locations.
But you CAN make it more efficient by making certain changes to your ad campaign.
By selecting ‘people living in this location’ or excluding locations entirely, you will be able to make sure that a bulk of your ads are sent to the RIGHT people.
Also, you mention where your geographical limits lie in the ads when you create them, so that people outside your location who get the ads mistakenly, will not reply to it.
