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A couple of years ago one of the major dating sites out there introduced geotargeted ads that were an instant hit with many of their affiliates. Overnight affiliates reported that signups soared as ads from the sponsor told surfers that there were eager contacts waiting in their localities and the ads even named the localities that the surfers were coming from.

But have they ever really been as effective as some people claim? I know that here in Australia most geotargeted ads that I see tell me that I'm hundreds of miles from where I really am and sometimes even place me in towns or localities that I've never even heard of.

So after doing a little research I've got to tell you that the answer to whether or not geotargeting works is ... it depends. And the reason that it depends is due to the way geotargeting is achieved.

Genuine geotargeting can be a very expensive exercise because it relies on data that comes from a highly specialized area that only a few providers excel in. A recent study that appeared over on Search Engine Land suggested that the industry leaders consist of just five companies and there is possibly quite a wide variation in accuracy between the leading company the one that's number five on the list.

The leading company not only identifies surfers through their IP address but also cross-references that with data that includes network gateways and router locations. The other four use variations of the same system but with some extras added in. These and other companies that provide geotargeting data compile databases on a regular basis - probably every month - and those databases are sent out to their clients.

Now that sounds all well and good but there are a lot of factors that can influence the accuracy of those databases. People hitting the Net on handheld devices are often routed through a single point for the city, state and perhaps even the country that they're in. That means that they all appear as one single IP address regardless of where they might be.

Big technologically advanced countries are going to have far more access points for normal Internet access than smaller or less technologically advanced countries.

Big companies also often route all their Internet users through one single point regardless of where they are in a country and so their IP addresses are going to provide false data. And then there's the issue of IP blocks changing locality and that's something that does happen. Over time IP blocks can drift a long way from where they were originally allocated.

For us as affiliates there's another problem. We rely upon our sponsors to handle all the geotargeting issues but are they really keeping their databases up to date and are they using the best database providers?

There's no doubt that these databases are very very expensive and it's unlikely that any adult online sponsor could afford a database from the leading geotargeting provider. If they could afford it you would then have to wonder if they could afford to renew that database every month. And renewing the database on a monthly basis is important to maintain the accuracy and effectiveness of geotargeted ads.

But even if our sponsors were using the top of the range database and they were renewing it on a monthly basis how effective might that database be?

In March this year one geotargeting provider - not in the top five - released a table of figures that show the accuracy of their database. They confidently state that their database is 99% accurate when it comes to identifying the country that a surfer is coming from ... but from there the figures fall away quite noticeably.

For example in the United States they claim that they can correctly resolve a surfer's location within 25 miles of his or her true location 81% of the time. In Canada they claim their accuracy is 82%; in Germany it's 67%; in Australia it's 66% and in France it's 55%. The worst figures of all come from the United Kingdome where the company only claims 46% accuracy.

So just how accurate and effective are the geotargeted ads that our sponsors are providing? Are they even less effective because they suggest a surfer is somewhere that he isn't?

Making sales on the Net is all about offering a product and establishing trust so would you trust a website that was trying to sell you something if they were trying to tell you that you were hundreds of miles away from your actual location?

Obviously that's a question for you to decide because each of us has the ultimate responsibility for the success or failure of our own business but if you've tried geotargeting your advertising without much success then perhaps the problem has been the inaccuracy of that form of advertising.

There's always going to be some hype and spin applied to anything new a sponsor produces to increase sales but it's up to the individual to see if that hype and spin really does translate into extra sales for them.