This is the situation now
Until now, advertisers could set mobile bid adjustments from -100% to +300% at the campaign or ad group level in Google Ads. That Google places great importance on mobile had been known for some time, but last year Google even announced that mobile-friendliness would become a ranking factor starting April 21, 2015. This meant that companies had to start making their landing pages mobile-friendly. In practice, one result of this has been that mobile bid adjustments are often used to bid -100% for mobile so that no costs are generated by clicks on an ad whose landing page is not (yet) mobile-friendly. Below you can see an example of a -100% bid adjustment for mobile.
What will change?
Soon, bid adjustments will become adjustable for all devices. Indeed, it will again be possible to make bid adjustments from -100% to even +900% for both smartphones and tablets. Tablets are thus once again a standalone device category, allowing advertisers to determine more precisely what they want to spend their Google Ads budget on. I honestly expected this Google Ads update earlier, but especially with mobile devices starting to overshadow desktop Internet usage, Google cannot avoid this separation into device categories.
Keep in mind differences in usage purposes by device
I don't think it would be wrong to dwell on the purpose for which devices are used. For example, tablets are often used for entertainment such as reading a book or watching movies, while for business purposes they are considered less suitable than a desktop. Therefore, it may be the case that advertisers will start bidding -100% on tablets in the future because based on their campaign statistics in recent years, they are more likely to expect conversions on desktops. Although the conversion rate in terms of product purchases for tablets may be lower than on a desktop, the cost per click (CPCs) on tablets may be relatively low in the beginning because not all advertisers will work with bid adjustments for tablet right away. With a somewhat lower conversion rate than desktop, these relatively low CPCs will probably still allow you to achieve a low(er) cost-per-acquisition(CPA) (than on a desktop), which means you will end up spending less cost per conversion.
This is how you can apply this
How big an impact this update will have on your campaigns, of course, depends in part on the type of products or services you provide and the mobile-friendliness of your Web site. Advertisers could respond to this change by adjusting conversion goals at the device level. For example, you often see people orient themselves on mobile but make the final purchase via desktop. With this knowledge in mind, you can create separate campaigns with orienting keywords for mobile devices, for example.
Compare ads with each other
By the way, purchases are increasingly being made on mobile devices, as the user interface of websites is becoming more user-friendly. You should therefore consider creating separate campaigns for mobile devices and/or displaying separate ad texts for these devices. If your campaigns have enough data, you can already use these statistics to determine whether it pays to split up these campaigns. If you want to differentiate between desktop versus mobile devices and tablets, you can, for example, create two campaign variants by copying your existing campaigns and bidding -100% for desktop in the mobile variant, while bidding -100% for mobile devices and tablets in the desktop variant. Moreover, you can manage your budgets even more targeted by setting separate budgets for campaigns based on device category.
Compare ads with each other
With these changes, results will be measured even better by device category and media budgets can be distributed more specifically across various devices. Especially as websites become increasingly mobile-friendly and the importance of mobile usage continues to grow, this Google Ads update is a step in the right direction!
