Affiliate Location Extensions: Agency Playbook

Affiliate location extensions are a Google Ads asset that shows searchers the nearest retailer stocking your client's product, as an address or a map pin. For agencies running paid media on behalf of manufacturers and consumer brands, they are one of the easiest wins to add to a retail client's campaign: no storefront required, no Business Profile to link, and they lift ad prominence at the exact moment someone is deciding where to buy. This playbook covers how we set them up, package them, and report on them for agency partners' clients.

What are affiliate location extensions, and why do agencies use them?

They help searchers find nearby stores that sell a product, even when your client doesn't own a single retail location of their own. When a client is a manufacturer or brand that sells through big-box chains and independent retailers, the affiliate location extension surfaces the closest stockist right inside the ad — turning a national search into a local, in-store visit.

Note the naming: Google renamed "ad extensions" to assets across the platform a few years ago, so this feature now appears in the interface as "affiliate location assets." Most advertisers and clients still say "extensions," and it's the same tool — we use both terms interchangeably when we brief a partner's client.

For an agency, the appeal is delivery leverage. It's a fast, high-value addition you can attach to any consumer-goods client's account without new creative or landing pages, and it gives you a concrete local-intent story to tell in the next reporting call.

Location assets vs. affiliate location assets: which fits the client?

Both are location-based, but they solve opposite problems. Use this to pick the right one during account setup:

	Location extension	Affiliate location extension
Best for	Clients with their own stores or offices	Manufacturers and brands sold through third-party retailers
What it shows	The client's own address, map, or drive time	The nearest chain or store that stocks the product
Setup requirement	Linked Google Business Profile	Select the retail chains — no Business Profile needed
Typical agency client	Local service business, multi-location retailer	CPG brand, product manufacturer, distributor

If your client operates their own storefronts, use the standard location extension instead. If they make a product that lives on someone else's shelves, affiliate location assets are the match.

How to set up affiliate location extensions for a client

Setup is quick because there's no Business Profile to connect — you just tell Google which retail chains carry the product. In the client's Google Ads account:

• Open the Assets section (formerly Ad extensions) at the account, campaign, or ad group level.
• Add a new affiliate location asset.
• Choose the major retail chains that stock the product.
• Save, then confirm the asset is serving after review.

Working at the campaign or ad group level lets you scope different retailers to different products — useful when one client's portfolio spans several SKUs sold through different chains. We standardize this as a checklist item in our onboarding for any retail PPC account so nothing gets missed across a multi-product portfolio.

How agencies package and price this for clients

Affiliate location assets are rarely a standalone line item — they belong inside a broader paid-search or local-visibility retainer. Because setup is low-effort but the payoff is a stronger local story, we treat them as part of account hygiene rather than a billable add-on, and let the value show up in the store-visit and click-through reporting.

For engagement models, the same options apply as with any white-label paid-media work: pay-per-task setup for a one-off account, a monthly white-label retainer for ongoing management, or reserved capacity when a partner needs guaranteed hours across a roster of retail clients. Matching the right shopper to the right store and stock is what makes affiliate location assets worth the five minutes it takes to add them — a stronger local-intent story to show up in store-visit and click-through reporting, even without a headline conversion number to point to.

When should an agency outsource affiliate PPC?

Outsource when your team is spread thin across channels and paid search is only an occasional client ask — the setup is simple, but ongoing optimization, retailer selection, and reporting eat hours you may not have. The trend is telling: 73% of in-house marketing teams now keep PPC management fully in-house, up sharply from 44% just two years earlier, according to a Search Engine Land survey of agency and client-side PPC professionals. That pull-in pressure is exactly why agencies lean on a white-label partner: you keep the client relationship and the reporting, while certified specialists run the account under your brand.

That's the model we run for partner agencies — white-label PPC management where a Diamond HubSpot Solutions Partner's paid-media team executes affiliate location assets, sitelink and other assets, and full campaign management, and the wins stay yours.

Measuring and reporting affiliate location results

Report on the local-intent signals: click-through rate, store-visit conversions where available, and the quality-score lift that comes from a richer, more relevant ad. Adding an asset increases the surface area and prominence of the ad on the results page, which typically improves CTR and, in turn, quality score — a story worth spelling out for the client rather than burying in a dashboard.

The local intent is real and time-sensitive. HubSpot's local SEO research found 88% of consumers who run a local search on their phone call or visit a store within 24 hours, so the window to catch a ready-to-buy searcher is short. If a client wants to go deeper on turning those searches into foot traffic, pair affiliate location assets with the tactics in our guide to maximizing store visits with Google Ads.

Affiliate location extensions won't carry a campaign on their own, but they're a low-cost, high-signal addition that makes any retail client's paid search more locally relevant — and an easy one to deliver at scale across a partner agency's book of business.