How a wide radius target can quietly send a paid search budget into the wrong metro
Consider a ten week paid search test for off-market small rentals in a secondary market, budgeted at $6,400 with $5,200 in media, targeting three counties. A 40 mile radius drawn from the county seat is an ordinary way to set geographic targeting, but if it clips the edge of a metro 35 miles away with several times the search volume and cost per click, the budget can quietly shift toward that neighboring market without anyone noticing until the location report is finally reviewed. In a case like this, the bulk of spend, well over half, can end up on zip codes never intended as targets, at $19 to $26 a click against $7 to $9 in the actual target counties, leaving a small handful of in-target clicks, a few form fills, and barely any real conversations from a meaningful budget. The corrective sequence is straightforward: target by an explicit zip code list rather than a radius, exclude any neighboring metro explicitly rather than relying on the radius edge to behave, and read the location and search terms reports weekly from week one rather than waiting for a monthly summary that only shows blended numbers, since blended numbers are exactly what hides this kind of leak until real budget is already gone.
