Google ads by default selects just the United States as a location in which to display your ads. But is this the best choice? Are there any other countries that are worthwhile to display ads to?

Here we go over some other countries you might want to consider. The factors that we use to determine eligibility are Cost Per Click Modifier (estimate of the average cost per click of the country in comparison with the US, data taken using random high volume keyword sampling with a sanity check from here: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/07/06/average-cost-per-click), English Speaking Population Modifier (% of country that speaks English, data taken from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population), and GDP Per Capita Modifier (GDP in comparison with the US, data taken from here: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD). Using these three factors we score and rank the countries from best options to display ads to worst.

The score is calculated by multiplying the GDP Per Capita Modifier by the English Speaking Population Modifier and then dividing by the Cost Per Click Modifier.

GDP per capita is an important metric because it is a rough estimation of the purchasing power of the average viewer of the ad. The higher the purchasing power of the viewer, the more likely they are to convert to paying for your product or service. That is why typically 1st world countries are more expensive to display ads to than 3rd world countries.

% of the country that speaks English is an important metric because, assuming your ads are in English, you will waste ad spend on people that don’t understand the ad. The lower someones understanding of an ad, the lower their chance of purchasing the product or service. Google ads lets you specify the language of the audience but this is only a partially effective mitigation strategy. Many browsers will have English set as a default despite the users not speaking English. Additionally, many users will be using a shared device which will have the default language set to English despite that particular user not speaking English. Finally, many English learners will set their browser to English to learn the language faster. Our own data tends to support this conclusion, as we find lots of foreign language queries even with the language set to English only. % of English speakers also tends to correlate with consumption of products and services from English speaking countries, so it acts as a good secondary metric when determining the average intent to purchase.

Finally cost per click is an important metric because it gives a sticker price to judge the other metrics against. If a country has only half the % of English speakers and half the GDP per capita of another country, but is 1/5 of the cost per click, it will still provide a much better value. Let’s get started with the list.

Countries that did not make this list were either too small, had too low of an English speaking %, or too low of a GDP per capita to qualify.