About Local Ads

Local Ads help businesses with a physical location or service area reach users. Advertisers can use Local Ads to drive marketing objectives like store visits, store sales, leads (calls, for example), and website traffic.

Advertisers must have their location assets linked at the account or campaign level to be eligible for Local Ads.

Local Ads serve on Performance Max and Search. For Local Services Ads, see Local Services Help for details.

Benefits

Here are some of the potential benefits of Local Ads:

  • Drive more foot traffic to the locations linked to your campaign with Store Visits or Direction Conversions.
  • Get calls. Local ads help users discover your business and find out how to call. Phone calls can be configured as biddable conversions when call tracking is enabled. Local Ads feature the phone number you provide in the ad creative or the phone number of the business location from Google Business Profile (GBP).
  • Help customers learn more about your business. Local search ads link to your business's location page, which includes information such as store hours, address, customer reviews, and photos.
  • Show richer, more engaging ads: Use assets from GBP for the physical location along with image extensions to serve rich ad formats that give potential customers a better understanding of your offerings.

How they work

Local Ads help users on google.com and Google Maps discover and engage with your business. When users search for nearby businesses on google.com or Maps, your business location can be prominently featured above other options. 

Local Ads promote information such as open hours, address, images or videos, reviews and other relevant assets to drive better performance. 

Linking a location opts you into location assets and Local Ads formats which can appear on Search and Maps.

Local Ads on Search

On Search, Local Ad formats contain media assets and can appear as independent ad-units or co-mingled ads within organic modules. Media assets are pulled from an array of sources (for example, merchant photos/ videos from Google Business Profile, image asset extensions, Google curated aerial view 3D videos of the location) along with a “map.” Clicking on the Map opens driving directions to the business. 

Location-specific merchant uploaded assets help potential customers get a deeper understanding of the physical location, which could help drive store visits, leads (such as calls to the physical location) or online sales. However, if an advertiser wants to only show campaign-specific assets, they can opt-out of showing merchant photos but it could impact the performance of the ad.

Multiple Local Ad formats are available on Search, and Google determines which format is shown based on user query, ad-relevance, and overall context.

This animation displays an example of your business location being featured at the top of local search results. This animation is an example of the Campaign Unicard local ad format.
This animation is an example of a collection of local search ad results, with your ad showing your campaign-specific assets. This animation is an example of a collection of local search ad results, with your ad showing your available media assets.
This animation is an example of a local search ad co-mingled with organic units. This animation is an example of a local search ad co-mingled with organic units.

Local Ads on Maps

When customers search for businesses, explore a local area within Google Maps, or navigate to a place, Google matches these actions to your business’s location. Users located nearby or that show interest in your location may view your ad.

Learn more about how to Show local search ads on Google Maps.

What do Local Ads Cost

Billing for Local Ads depends on your campaign configuration. For Search and Performance Max campaigns, you will be charged a standard cost-per-click (CPC) for any of the following clicks on your ads (and charged only once).

  • Clicks on headline or sitelinks that take users to the advertiser provided web page
  • Click on a headline that opens up the Google Business Profile
  • Clicks on “map” to open driving directions
  • Click on any of the action buttons (for example, Call, Directions, Website)

Swipe interactions on the media carousel, or clicks on media assets that do not take users to the landing page or Business Profile are not charged. Performance Max for store goals campaigns charge cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) when users see a branded logo pin on Maps. Learn more about Performance Max for store goals.

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