The short answer
Narrow the map, not the list of websites
Sometimes, and it depends on what you're narrowing. Cutting your geography down to two zip codes instead of a whole county makes your ads work harder, because the same budget lands more often in front of the same faces. Cutting the list of websites your ads are allowed to appear on does the opposite: it doesn't concentrate anything, it just makes the same audience harder and pricier to find. Narrow the map, not the list.
Does advertising in fewer places make your ads work harder
Half the time, yes. Half the time, no. It comes down to whether you're narrowing geography or narrowing placements, and those two things behave in opposite directions even though they sound similar.
Geography concentrates. If you take the same budget and aim it at two zip codes instead of an entire county, you haven't spent less, you've just spent it on fewer people. Those people end up seeing your name more often, which is the entire mechanic behind farming: familiarity built through repetition. A tighter map means more frequency per person, and more frequency is what makes a farm feel like it's working.
Placements don't concentrate the same way, and this is where the instinct breaks down. The websites your ads can appear on are not the audience. The audience is a group of specific people, defined by who they are and where they live, and that group exists whether they're reading a recipe site, a local news page, or checking sports scores. Cutting the list of sites your ads are eligible to show on doesn't press your budget deeper into that same group. It just removes some of the places that group can be found, so the system has to work harder and spend more to reach the same people it already had access to.
Why zip codes and website lists aren't the same kind of narrow
Zip codes define who counts as your audience in the first place. Website lists define where an audience you've already defined happens to be browsing at a given moment. Narrowing the first one shrinks and sharpens the audience on purpose. Narrowing the second one doesn't touch the audience at all, it just closes doors that audience could have walked through.
This is why an agent can shrink a farm from a whole county down to a few zip codesand see the ads feel more present and familiar, while shrinking the list of eligible websites for the same audience just makes the ads quieter and pricier without making them feel more local. One kind of narrowing sharpens focus. The other kind just narrows the pipes the message has to travel through.
What this means for how you set up a package
If you're building out listing ads or brand ads and want them to feel more concentrated, work the map. Pull the geography in tight around the streets or neighborhood that actually matter to that listing or to your name recognition, and let the budget do fewer, more repeated impressions on fewer people. That's the version of narrow that pays off.
Leave the website side alone. The value in reaching people across many different sites and apps is that you're following the same defined audience wherever they naturally spend time, not that the ad shows up on any particular page. Restricting that list doesn't make the targeting sharper, it just makes the same people more expensive to find. Narrow the map. Leave the rest open.
Does narrowing your farm area to fewer zip codes make ads work harder?
Yes, this is the one place where narrower genuinely helps. When an agent aims the same budget at two zip codes instead of an entire county, the same set of homeowners sees that agent's name more often instead of the budget spreading thin across people who will never sell there. Farming runs on repetition with familiar faces, so tightening the geography is the lever that actually works. Smaller map, more repetition.
Does limiting the websites your ads can run on make them work better?
No, cutting the site list doesn't help the way agents assume. The audience for a listing or brand ad is defined by who someone is and where they live, not by which website happens to be open on their screen, so trimming that list doesn't push the budget deeper into the same neighborhood. All it does is shrink the places that same audience can be found, which makes each person harder and more expensive to reach. The list isn't the lever.
What should an agent narrow instead of the site list to make a Hugo package go further?
The geography, every time. If an agent wants a package to feel more concentrated, the move is tightening the zip codes or neighborhood boundaries the ads target, not restricting where online those ads are allowed to show. Geography controls who sees the ad. Placements just control where they happen to see it. Move the boundary, not the list.