Buying traffic · also called location targeting, geo
Geo-targeting
Geo-targeting is restricting an ad campaign to people in chosen countries, regions or cities, and excluding everyone else.
Every ad platform lets the buyer choose where ads run, down to country, state, city or postcode. In arbitrage slang a country is simply a "geo".
Location is the single biggest driver of money in search arbitrage, on both sides of the trade. What advertisers pay for a click on the search feed depends heavily on the visitor's country, because advertisers bid most where customers spend most (see Tier 1 / Tier 2 / Tier 3 geos). What the arbitrageur pays for that visitor also varies by country. The same keyword can be profitable in one country and hopeless in the next.
So campaigns are normally split by geo: one country (or a small group with similar economics) per campaign, with language, keywords and lander matched to it. Mixing countries hides the truth, because a blended average can look healthy while one geo quietly loses money. Geo also has a compliance side: feeds approve specific markets, consent rules such as GDPR differ, and traffic whose claimed location does not match its real one is a classic invalid traffic signal.
An example
Say a campaign shows 20% ROI overall. Split by geo it may be +45% in the US on 60% of spend and -17.5% in a second country on 40%: 0.6 x 45 + 0.4 x (-17.5) = 20.
Related terms
Tier 1 / Tier 2 / Tier 3 geos
Geo tiers are an informal industry ranking of countries by how much advertisers pay for their clicks, with Tier 1 the highest-paying markets.
Dayparting
Dayparting is scheduling ads to run, pause or bid differently at particular hours of the day or days of the week.
RPC (revenue per click)
RPC is the average revenue earned per monetised (paid ad) click: the "sell" price in search arbitrage. Convert it to revenue per visitor (RPV) before comparing it with CPC.
CPC (cost per click)
CPC is the price paid for one click on an ad; in search arbitrage it is what the arbitrageur pays a traffic source for each visitor.
Broad targeting
Broad targeting means giving an ad platform few or no audience restrictions beyond country, age and language, and letting its algorithm decide who sees the ad.