Adwords: Decrease mobile bid for only certain ad groups?

[UnderRugSwept]

In one of my AdWords campaigns, I've noticed that certain ad groups consistently convert twice as badly on mobile devices as other ad groups do. Is there a way to adjust mobile bidding only for certain ad groups, or can you only control this campaign-wide?

[Linda-Vassily]

Yes, you can adjust your mobile bid at the ad group level. Select the ad group you want to adjust by ticking the little box to the left of it and click the settings tab, then the devices sub-tab. You can adjust your bid by clicking in the in the "Bid adj." column.

[UnderRugSwept]

Hmm, when I do that it tries to adjust it for the whole campaign.

[RMATVMC]

You can make the bid adjustment by going into the ad group. Then select "settings" then "devices" you should see a box below that has three lines.

desktop

mobile

tablet

Look to the right of that box and you will see "bid adj" below that in the mobile column you will either have a dash - or a percentage +or- click that and make your bid adjustment accordingly

Hopefully that helps. .

[Linda-Vassily]

It sounds like you might be selecting the campaign settings, rather than the ad group settings. Try this. When you are in Adwords, look at the folder tree to the left of your Adwords screen. You can see the ad groups indented under the campaigns that they are in. [Sorry if this is too elementary--sometimes it is hard to explain things online.]

Click on the ad group you want to adjust, then on the settings tab, then on the devices sub-tab. [You will know that you are in the correct place, the ad group rather than the campaign, because there will be no ad group tab.]

That is the other thing that might be causing your problem--you have to make sure "Devices" is selected, otherwise it will try to switch you to the full campaign if you have "All settings" selected. If "Devices" is selected, you should have no problem adjusting the mobile bid specifically for that ad group.

[UnderRugSwept]

Ah, actually going into the ad group was the key. Thank you!

[UnderRugSwept]

Enhanced campaigns have been out over a year now (I think). Has Google seen the error of its ways yet and separated computers from tablets? My cost per conversion is five times higher on tablets than computers, and I can't find a way to separate them!

[john4math]

Have you tried any of Google's bidding algorithms, like Conversion Optimizer, ROAS bidding, or enhanced CPC?  Google will take device (or at least browser) into account when adjusting bids with these, so you should see your tablet spend drop off if you're using one of these algorithms.

This is sort of a random aside, but I read about someone trying to only use Adwords geared towards a certain browser by reading the user agent of the browser after someone clicked an ad, and only including a conversion script on landing page when the user was using the right browser.  Then you could set Conversion Optimizer to using a CPA equivalent to the CPC you're looking for, and Google will stop showing ads to those other browsers since they're not converting.  Pretty clever, but I've never done anything like that myself.

[UnderRugSwept]

I have used conversion optimizer a few times, and each time, it basically destroyed everything. Enhanced CPC sometimes makes things MINIMALLY better. I think conversion optimizer would work better if I had ads that were long-running, but I tend to be constantly pausing things and changing things.