Is it possible to advertise online with large sites like Facebook and Google to a specific area?

[Jake]

I don't have much experience with online advertising and am really only hoping to have my ads displayed to people who have an IP within a certain area. I am wondering if that is possible and if so how specific or small of an area is possible? Would a single city and surrounding area be possible, or even smaller? Is there cost variation if I am narrowing down my targeted area?

I am primarily looking to place my ads on Facebook and Google so if anyone has an experience in advertising with them and can help me out that would be awesome!

[Wayne Z]

With both sites, you can narrow your advertising down to specific areas (zip/postal codes).

I have a small tax service business and I have used Google and Facebook to advertise it. I only wanted to advertise in my area so that is what I did.

However.........

The results from the advertising were not good.

-Facebook - I got a lot of "Likes" on my FB page but no new customers.
-Google - I got a lot of clicks to my website but only a few new customers.

The additional revenue from the Google/Facebook ads did not come close to exceeded the added expense from those ads.

Of course, your results may be different.

Bottom Line: The best advertising is the cheapest; word of mouth.

[Stuart]

Hi,

Yes, you can target different areas of the country where you live with Google Ad-words. With Facebook you can even target your adverts to all different audiences like gender, age and location etc.

I hope this helps!

Cheers,

Stuart

[Jake]

To add, most advertising networks offer Geo Targeting based on the visitor's IP address, which really identifies the locating of their internet providers office/connection point, it's not as accurate as zip codes, typical Google Adwords allows you to specify a radius around a selected point.
Facebook and similarly the dating site Plenty of Fish use member registration information allowing you to name the city you want to target plus any other cities within a certain radius, based on member registration information, they also offer demographic targeting based on registration info, this can be quite powerful, you can setup a facebook ad just to get statistics in advance as to how many engaged women between 18 and 34 live within 10 miles of your city.
Premium paid advertising is expensive due to competitive bidding, to have a chance of being profitable careful optimization of advertising copy, leywordselection and the landing sales-page is needed.

[Anthony]

Not, it is not.