Tampa vs St. Pete ad targeting comes down to one question every local owner already knows the answer to: will your customer cross the bridge? If you have lived here more than a year you know that Tampa Bay is really two markets separated by a body of water and three bridges that are all unpleasant at 5pm. Your ad settings should reflect that. Most do not, and the result is money spent on people who will never book because you are "over the bridge."
The bridge problem in numbers you can feel
From Westshore to downtown St. Pete on the Howard Frankland is 20 minutes at 10am and 45 or more at rush hour. From South Tampa to Gulfport over the Gandy is similar. From Carrollwood to Clearwater via the Courtney Campbell can be an hour with traffic. A Pinellas customer with a plumbing problem will pick a Pinellas plumber almost every time, not out of loyalty but because "I can be there in 30 minutes" is a lie from across the bay.
That is the whole argument. If your ads reach both sides equally, half your budget is going to people who will click, read your address, and close the tab.
Which businesses are one-side businesses
- Almost always one side: emergency home services (plumbing, AC, electrical, locksmith), lawn and pool routes, house cleaning, mobile detailing, dog walking, restaurants, gyms, salons, urgent care, dental, pediatric practices.
- Sometimes both: roofing (Pinellas roofs are older and more valuable per job, so some Hillsborough roofers cross for the right lead), remodeling, solar, specialty contractors, high-end auto repair, and personal injury or family law where the client comes to you once.
- Genuinely regional: commercial services, wedding vendors, luxury real estate, cosmetic surgery, and anything people drive an hour for.
How Tampa and St. Pete differ as audiences
Pinellas is older on average, denser, and mostly built out. There is no new-subdivision growth, so demand is replacement and repair: old roofs, old plumbing, older homeowners who want someone reliable and will pay for it. Neighborhoods like Snell Isle, Old Northeast, Pasadena, and the beaches from Treasure Island up to Belleair skew high-value. Largo, Pinellas Park, and Seminole are working middle class. The beaches are tourist-heavy in March and quiet in September.
Hillsborough is younger, more spread out, and growing. South Tampa is affluent, Seminole Heights and Riverside Heights are the renovate-an-old-bungalow crowd, New Tampa and Westchase are family subdivisions, and the Brandon-Riverview stretch is where much of the new-resident volume lands. A larger Spanish-speaking market sits in Town 'n' Country, west Tampa, and parts of Brandon.
Those differences mean the same ad rarely works on both sides. "Serving St. Pete for 20 years" lands in Pinellas. "New to the area? We have you covered" lands in Riverview.
Setting up the geography in Google Ads
Do not use a radius from your address. A 15-mile circle around a St. Pete address covers South Tampa across the water. Use one of these instead:
- County targeting: Pinellas County only, or Hillsborough only. Fast and clean.
- ZIP lists: more precise. A north Pinellas AC company might run 33755 through 33765, 34677, 34683, 34695, 34698, and skip everything south of Ulmerton.
- Separate campaigns per side: if you really serve both, split them so you can bid and budget independently. Pinellas leads and Hillsborough leads will not cost the same.
Also set location options to "presence" rather than "presence or interest," or Google will show your St. Pete ad to someone in Orlando who searched "plumber st petersburg" for their rental property. The full set of mistakes is in radius targeting in Tampa Bay.
Setting it up on Facebook and Instagram
Meta lets you drop pins with a radius and, more usefully, exclude areas. Include your side by city and ZIP, then explicitly exclude the other side's cities. Facebook's radius minimum is 1 mile, so you can also draw a tight cluster of pins along a corridor like US-19 or Dale Mabry rather than one big blob. Use "people living in this location," not "everyone in this location," or you will pay to reach every conference attendee and Bucs fan passing through.
When crossing the bridge is worth it
If a job is worth $10,000 or more, the bridge does not matter and you should target both counties with separate creative. Roofers, remodelers, and solar installers regularly do this. Just keep the campaigns separate, put a real local address or service-area line in the ad copy for each side, and check the cost per lead on each every month. If Pinellas leads cost double and close at half the rate, that campaign is telling you something.
Getting this geography right is the single cheapest improvement most Tampa Bay accounts can make, and it is the first thing we fix when we take over an account as part of how Arbor runs your ads. Respect the water, and your budget goes a lot further.