Radius targeting in Tampa Bay is the default setting in every ad platform and the wrong choice for most businesses here. Draw a 15-mile circle around a shop in South Tampa and you have just told Google to spend money reaching Gulfport, St. Pete, Pinellas Park, and a large chunk of open water. A 15-mile circle around Clearwater reaches Safety Harbor, Oldsmar, and Westchase across the Courtney Campbell. The map does not care about bridges. Your customers do.
Why a circle is the wrong shape here
In a city like Orlando or Jacksonville, a radius roughly matches how far people will drive. In Tampa Bay the drivable area from any point is shaped like a wedge or a crescent, pinched by Old Tampa Bay, Hillsborough Bay, and the Gulf. A pool service company in Carrollwood can reach Lutz, Citrus Park, and Temple Terrace in 20 minutes. It cannot reach Safety Harbor in 20 minutes even though it is closer on the map. Radius targeting pays for the map, not the road.
The three shapes that actually fit
ZIP code lists
The most precise option on both Google and Meta. Sit down with the ZIPs you actually drive to and list them. A few starting clusters:
- South Tampa: 33606, 33609, 33611, 33616, 33629
- North Tampa and Carrollwood: 33612, 33613, 33618, 33624, 33625, 33647
- Westchase, Citrus Park, Odessa: 33626, 33635, 33556
- Brandon, Valrico, Riverview: 33510, 33511, 33594, 33596, 33569, 33578, 33579
- Wesley Chapel and Land O' Lakes: 33543, 33544, 33545, 34638, 34639
- Clearwater and Dunedin: 33755, 33756, 33759, 33761, 33763, 33764, 33765, 34698
- St. Pete: 33701 through 33716, minus any you skip
County targeting
Less precise but very fast. Hillsborough only, or Pinellas only, or Pinellas plus Pasco. Good for businesses that serve a whole side of the bay and do not want to maintain lists. The downside: Hillsborough County stretches to Plant City and Wimauma, which a Westchase business may not serve.
Multi-pin radius
On Meta, instead of one big circle, drop three to five small pins (2 to 4 miles each) along your real route: one in Carrollwood, one in Lutz, one in Land O' Lakes. The union is a corridor shape, not a blob. Google supports this too.
The settings that quietly waste money
- "Presence or interest" on Google. The default. It shows your ad to anyone searching about your area from anywhere, including a snowbird in Ohio searching for a Sarasota pool company in October. Switch to "presence" unless you want that.
- "Everyone in this location" on Meta. Includes visitors. In Clearwater Beach in March that means spring breakers. Use "people living in this location" for home services.
- Radius around the office instead of the service area. Your office in Ybor is not the center of your customers. Center on where the jobs are.
- No exclusions. Even with a good ZIP list, exclude MacDill AFB, the airport, and the port if your category does not serve them, and exclude the opposite side of the bay explicitly on Meta.
Bridges and the seasonal wrinkle
Drive time is not fixed. The Howard Frankland and Gandy are fine at 10am and brutal at 5pm; I-275 through downtown backs up daily; US-19 in Pinellas is slow all the time. On top of that, snowbird season from November to April adds traffic and demand on the beaches, and summer afternoon storms slow everything after 3pm. If your business does same-day service, consider a tighter geography than you think, and use ad scheduling to spend more in the morning hours when a booked job can actually be reached.
How to check whether you are wasting clicks now
In Google Ads, open the location report and look at where clicks and conversions actually came from by city and ZIP. Most accounts we review have 20 to 40 percent of clicks landing in places the business never drives to. Sort by cost with zero conversions, and those rows are your exclusion list. In Meta, the breakdown by region is coarser, but the same idea holds.
This is basic hygiene and it is the first thing that gets fixed in how Arbor runs your ads, because it is often worth more than any bidding strategy. If you are choosing between sides of the bay, the companion guide on Tampa vs St. Pete ad targeting goes deeper on the two audiences. And the landing page has to match the geography too: if a Dunedin homeowner clicks and sees "serving Tampa," you have paid for a bounce. Run the free SEO & AI score to see how your site reads to someone who just arrived from an ad.