Geographical Targeting

Google provides geolocation information through the Geo object. This document describes higher-level details of how Google populates geolocation in bid requests and suggests best practices for its use.

Note: The BidRequest.device.geo.ext.geo_criteria_id field is deprecated; we encourage using the Geo object instead.

How the Geo object is populated

Google only supports geolocation information describing the location of the device on which the ad would be rendered, which is exposed in BidRequest.device.geo. This location information is only obtained from IP geolocation, never from GPS or other sources.

Privacy protections

In order to protect user privacy, Google only provides a coarse geolocation that is shared by a sufficiently large number of users, generalizing detected location as necessary.

Location representations

The Geo object supports two separate representations of location – civil location and geographical coordinates.

Civil locations are represented by the following fields:

• country
• region
• metro
• city
• zip

Geographical coordinates are represented by the following fields:

• lat
• lon
• accuracy

Both representations contain the same location and accuracy. For example, if a bid request populates BidRequest.device.geo with city-level precision, then the lat and lon fields will contain the latitude and longitude of the centerpoint of the identified city, and accuracy will be the radius of a circle with the same area as that city. Google also limits the precision of the lat and lon fields to 0.01 degrees.

Best practices for geolocation targeting

For bidders that need custom geolocation data we recommend using the approximate lat, lon and accuracy fields for performing spatial geolocation lookups. We don't recommend the use of the BidRequest.device.ip field for geolocation, since Google only shares the IP address in truncated form; the use of truncated IP addresses for geolocation can result in somewhat inaccurate results.

The Geo Table (Deprecated)

Caution: Google strongly recommends using BidRequest.device.geo instead. Support for the geo criteria ID has been temporarily added with the BidRequest.device.geo.ext.geo_criteria_id extension in order to simplify migration from the obsolete Google RTB protocol. Support for this extension can be removed at any time after May 1st, 2025.

The BidRequest.device.geo.ext.geo_criteria_id field represents geolocation as a numeric identifier, which is mapped to a geolocation in geo-table.csv available for download in the Reference tables section of the Protos & Reference Data page. This field and the corresponding table are now deprecated. You can use BidRequest.device.geo to get similar geolocation information.

As an example, if a bid request populates geo with city-level precision, then the geo_criteria_id will contain the code for the corresponding city. You can use that ID to locate a record in the geo table.

Columns

Criteria ID

Unique and persistent assigned ID. In the API, these criteria are of type Location.

Name

Best available English name of the geo target.

Canonical Name

The constructed fully qualified English name consisting of the target's own name, and that of its parent and country. This field is meant only for disambiguating similar target names--it's not supported in LocationCriterionService (use location names or criteria IDs instead).

Parent ID

The criteria ID of a parent. This field is included for legacy support, and the IDs may not be consistent across datasets. Canonical names is the preferred method of constructing hierarchies.

Region Code

The ISO 3166-2 region code for the state or province target, if one exists.

Country Code

The ISO-3166-1 alpha-2 country code that is associated with the target.

Target Type

Allowable values:

• Airport
• Arrondissement
• Autonomous Community
• Borough
• Canton
• City
• City Region
• Congressional District
• Country
• County
• Department
• District
• DMA region
• Governorate
• Metro
• Municipality
• National Park
• Neighborhood
• Okrug
• Other
• Postal Code
• Prefecture
• Province
• Region
• State
• Territory
• TV Region
• Union Territory
• University

Non-targetable locations

Note: Some countries or territories are not targetable, but may appear in reports based on the user's area of interest or physical location.

Due to advertising regulations and laws of the People's Republic of China, you may be asked to provide certificates and licenses if you are advertising certain categories of products in China. You do not need to submit certificates until after your account has been activated. Once your account is active, you will be provided with information on how to submit certificates to Google.