Search Spring Cleaning Guest Post #3 – Device Bids

Before you read about Device Bids, take the Kenshoo Search Spring Cleaning Week Survey to learn just how long a full search engine advertising audit might take you and how much time we can help you save with our automated Skai Audit tool. 

Today’s guest contributor for Search Spring Cleaning Week is Eric Yarnik, Director, Search & Social Advertising for Perfect Search Media, who explains why device bids are very important to use correctly in paid search.

In today’s mobile-first world, it’s a must for advertisers to consider how their search ads perform on mobile and tablet devices vs. desktop computers. As seen recently in Skai’s Q1 2019 Quarterly Trends Report, mobile spending has been about half of all paid search budgets for the last three quarters.

Thankfully both Google and Bing Ads give advertisers both the data to assess device-specific performance and the tools to optimize device performance. Specific device bid adjustments can be implemented at the campaign or ad group level to ensure advertisers aren’t spending too much of their finite budget on mobile devices If performance is inefficient, for example.

Device bid adjustments modify the keyword or ad group level bid and add another layer of complexity to an advertiser’s bid strategy to help boost performance. By default, search campaigns will run on any device when launched.

Assuming the site is mobile-friendly, we recommend gathering initial data from campaigns over the first few weeks to analyze variances across device CPCs and conversion rates. Depending on the type of account, campaigns, keywords, website, bid strategy, and so on, device performance can vary.

Device Bids in action

For our clients, proactive and frequent device bid adjustments are crucial to achieving and maintaining strong performance.

For example, perhaps a mobile CPC is much lower than on the desktop. This could help us get a better return on ad spend (ROAS), improve account efficiency, and boosts results.

Recently, one of our client’s CPCs increased both month-over-month (MoM) and year-over-year (YoY) across top performing campaigns which negatively impacted our clicks and conversions. After analyzing the performance by device, we noticed that desktop CPCs increased significantly compared to mobile CPCs, which was steady.

Given that conversion performance was similar across mobile and desktop search, we increased mobile bids and decreased computer bids to drive more clicks. By reallocating spend to mobile, we drove more clicks using the existing the budget and helped conversion volume and efficiency bounce back to goal.

Learn More About Skai Search