Definition
What is presence targeting?
Presence targeting is a Google Ads location targeting setting that limits ad delivery to people who are, or regularly are, in the chosen territory. It stands against the default "presence or interest" setting, which adds people interested in that territory from elsewhere. The choice changes the population being measured, and therefore what a campaign result allows you to conclude.
Presence, or presence or interest
Google Ads Help describes the default option, presented as recommended: it targets people in the territory, people who are regularly there, and people who have shown interest in that territory. To limit delivery to people who are actually present, you have to change this setting by hand.
The setting lives in the advanced location options, campaign by campaign. It is not set once for the whole account: a campaign added later goes back to the default. A well-configured account can therefore drift over time.
Google also states that targeting relies on several signals (device settings, behaviour) and that complete accuracy is not guaranteed. Even with strict presence, a small margin of error remains.
Why the setting decides a market test
A market test answers a single question: does this territory, on its own, produce demand at an acceptable cost? Anyone measured outside the territory distorts the answer, in both directions.
- Upward. Some clicks come from people outside the market (expatriates, comparison searches, competitors keeping watch). A few fill in a form: your cost per enquiry looks better than it is, and sales may not follow.
- Downward. Those clicks consume a finite daily budget. On a tight test budget, the volume measured in the market can stay too low to conclude within the planned time.
The default setting suits a campaign that sells. It does not suit a campaign that measures.
Exclusions have their own setting
Excluding a territory is not always enough to stop appearing there. The Google Ads API documentation describes a separate setting for exclusions: you can, for example, target a country including interested people while excluding a state based on presence alone.
For an exporter without a licence in two states, a poorly set exclusion can let part of that traffic through. Each click then becomes an expense combined with a regulatory risk. The check consists of reading both settings, inclusions and exclusions, in every campaign.
The setting by objective
- Testing whether a new market produces demand: presence, because the answer is only worth something if it comes from the territory measured.
- Selling a service limited to a territory: presence, because a person outside the territory cannot become a customer.
- Hospitality, tourism, education, real estate: presence or interest, because the buyer plans from elsewhere. Google cites a 5% gain in Search Network conversions for these sectors (internal data from 2022).
- Excluding a territory for regulatory reasons: presence on the exclusion.
Fictional example: a Quebec manufacturer opens Ontario with a Google Ads campaign left on the default setting. After six weeks, it has 40 enquiries and a cost per enquiry that reassures it. The geographic report shows that 12 of those enquiries come from Quebec and the United States. Only 28 Ontario enquiries remain: too few to conclude, while the planned budget is spent.
Set to presence from the start, the same campaign would have spent its whole budget on people located in Ontario. A report opened at the end of the first week would also have shown the gap after seven days rather than after six weeks.
We first separate the campaign that sells from the campaign that measures: the two do not use the same setting. On a market entry test, we set both inclusion and exclusion to presence, campaign by campaign, and we note who checked it.
We open the geographic report at the end of the first week rather than at the end of the test. A misconfigured campaign corrected on day seven costs a week. Corrected on day sixty, it can cost the expansion decision.
Not to be confused with
- Presence or interest targeting
- Presence or interest targeting is the Google Ads default: it adds people interested in the territory from elsewhere to the people who are there. Presence targeting removes them and keeps only people located in the territory.
- Location exclusion
- A location exclusion removes a territory from delivery and carries its own presence setting. Presence targeting applies to the territory you include.
Related concepts
- Google Ads
- First market signal
- Floor budget of a market test
- Market entry cost
- Stop criterion
- Learning phase
- Microsoft Advertising
Further reading
- Google Ads location targeting: setting up a market test
- How much advertising budget do you need to test a new market?
- New markets: managing the learning phase of your ad campaigns
- Microsoft Ads for B2B: how to test a new market
- Export planning: acquiring your first customers in a new market
Related services
Frequently asked questions
How do I know whether our campaigns are set to presence?
Open the advanced location options of each campaign and read two settings: the one for inclusions and the one for exclusions. The setting does not apply to the whole account. A campaign added later goes back to the default, presence or interest.
Should we always choose presence?
No. For a market entry test or a service limited to a territory, yes. For a hotel, a school or a real estate developer, the buyer often plans from elsewhere: the presence or interest setting is then justified.
How can we see where our clicks really come from?
Through the geographic report in the Google Ads account, which breaks clicks down by region. It takes a few minutes to read. On a market test, check it at the end of the first week, not at the end of the test.
