Which type of automation you should use will depend on two factors: How your Google campaigns / Facebook ad sets are structured, and whether you want to automate based on the viewer’s weather, or the weather in a specific location (e.g. a ski resort).

A Single Location Automation (SLA), requires that each campaign or ad set is aligned to a single ‘weather location'. The advantage of this type of automation is that it offers a wider selection of actions. The disadvantage is that you may need to create more campaigns/ ad sets to cover your geographical market.

A Multi Location Automation (MLA), on the other hand, works for campaigns/ ad sets that have multiple geo targets (cities, zip codes) or broad geo targets (e.g. states & countries), and is able to apply localized weather automation at a granular level for each location. The trade-off is that an MLA has fewer actions to choose from, with the actions only operating at the campaign or ad set geo level.

Use the decision tree chart below to help you decide which type of automation to use for your campaigns.

A Single Location Automation (SLA) requires each campaign or ad set within your automation to be aligned with a unique ‘weather location’ (weather data point). The weather location must be suitably granular, e.g. a county, city, zip or postal code.

Once each of your campaigns / ad set is aligned to a weather location, you can create automated rules (consisting of triggers and actions) based on the weather in that specific location. Here is an example of a Single Location Automation setup for Facebook:

An example of a Single Location Automation , with each Facebook ad set aligned to a specific weather location.

Campaign Level

Ad Group level

Ad Level

Ad Set Level

Ad Level

Each Google campaign or Facebook ad set within your automation can be aligned with only one weather location. Therefor if you're looking to target based on your audience's weather, and your audience is spread over a large geographical area, then you will need to create multiple campaigns/ ad sets, each one targeting a specific city or zip code within your broader target market.

A Multi-Location Automation (MLA) is best suited to campaigns with more complex geo targeting. An MLA should be used when your campaign / ad set is targeting either a large geographical region with inherent weather variability (such as a country or a state), or is targeting multiple geos with differing weather conditions (e.g. multiple zip codes or multiple cities; multiple addresses in the same zip code would be fine).

Multi-location automations are used exclusively for automating your campaign based on your audience's weather (rather than the weather in a remote location).

Campaign Geo Level

Ad Set Level

A Multi-location automation does not require a separate campaign or ad set for each location so the set up requirements are less exacting than for a SLA. In most (but not all) cases, WeatherAds is able to recognize and work with your campaign / ad set’s geo targeting. If you are targeting a large geography that is subject to weather variability (e.g. a country), WeatherAds will automatically atomize it into smaller regions (e.g. cities) so it can accurately apply weather automation at a localized level. This atomization breakdown process is automated, but will be visible within your campaign’s location targeting settings after you have set your automation live.

Read more about Multi-Location Automation set up requirements for Google Ads and for Facebook.