Now that we’re all being forced into using Enhanced Campaigns, we’re going to need to get used to having less control over who we target and how we target them.
If you’ve never targeted mobile devices in the past or you’ve never been happy with their performance, you can block that traffic using the mobile bid adjustment of -100%.
There is still the issue of tablet traffic that might not be performing well in your particular case. With Enhanced campaigns, tablet devices such as iPads, Kindles and the like will be shown the same ads as the desktop traffic. That can be a real problem for some advertisers.
Smart Downloads
We’ve been advising some of our clients that are offering downloadable software, to convert their downloads into smart downloads.
The idea behind the smart download is that you detect the platform the downloader is using, and provide a download accordingly. If they are on a platform that is supported by your software, send them to your download as you normally would. If they are using an unsupported platform, capture their email address, offering them an email with instructions on how to download your software on a device that is supported.
By using smart downloads, you’ll avoid turning away potential downloaders. It will also give you the ability to track these types of visitors through AdWords and Google Analytics.
Reduce traffic from mobile devices on the display network.
After converting over to Enhanced Campaigns, you may have begun to notice some unusual traffic through your automatic placement reports. This traffic appears to be originating from games or mobile apps and tends to look like the following in the reports:
You cannot exclude “mobile app” within the campaign exclusions. I have been informed by Google that you can exclude the following domains which should reduce traffic from tablet devices on the display network:
- adsenseformobileapps.com
- appspot.com
- anonymous.google
It would be important to note that prior to excluding these domains, I would suggest that you confirm that they don’t indeed produce conversions.
Another exclusion that you’ll probably want to use is accomplished through the category exclusion section of campaigns that target the display network. Within this section, you can exclude traffic from In-Game and GMob mobile app non-interstitial categories.
Just keep in mind that these exclusions are not 100% tablet device exclusions. You may still receive traffic from iPads and the like if they were to directly browse a website that had AdWords ads or if they were to search Google. This is why the responsive design approach of the smart download is probably your best option.
