Optimizing the mobile bid question

It's more for anyone advertising in the US / Canada. How do you figure out your mobile bid? I personally think the cell phone advertising is still a waste of money, yet I do not want to go just by what I think. I usually set the bid 40% lower (AdWords still gives me the 2-3d spot, almost always). But then I think what if I am wrong, what if it's not a waste of money? So, 1. Do you actively advertise for mobile devices? 2. How high / low do you set your bid?

 

I tell everyone when they first launch a campaign to negative 100% out mobile traffic to start. This is more so they can focus the ad spend and try to get profitable.

Mobile traffic can and does convert. It just does so at a lot lower level for physical products. Service based industries can be fantastic as a lot of people are searching on their mobiles for plumbers, lawn care etc..

If you are not profitable at -40% I would just keep cutting it downward. Generally I start off when mobile is turned on at no mark down and test for a week then start adjusting the bid as needed. It's common for me to have to get to -70% or -80% to get profitable.

Outside of the U.S. can be a very different story. I had a campaign in Brazil that converted crazy well for a CPS product on mobile traffic. This was largely due to not nearly as many people having Desktops and so many people having internet only with their mobile device. So what I said before is more my experience in the US/CA market which is what you were asking about.

 

One more question. Do you know if Canadians spend more time / do more searches on cell phones compared to the US folks? I mean, will it make sense to have a higher mobile bid for Canada?

 

Hi, do you have conversions setup on your site and or revenue?

Once you setup conversions and revenue for visitors then you should be able to adjust your bid percentage so your matching both mobile and desktop at the same CPA.

 

I always set mobile campaigns off by specifying -100%. Reason being that conversion rates are not as good as on desktops. But I'm slowly changing my ways.

A few reasons for that. One is that the trend is to mobiles. Stats say that mobile searches are now more than desktop. Another is that a client of mine said that 40% of his sales are on mobiles. Actually, for the type of products he sells (physical so I think Jerdei has a good point), it makes sense. But it may not for every business. So I turned mobiles back on with still very poor results. I then realized that mobiles devices are very different than desktops (duh) and the mobile searcher can have somewhat different needs. I then proceeded to analyze the data and built a campaign just for mobiles. This is done by setting a low bid so that desktop ads don't show as often and setting the bid multiplier to the maximum 300%. It's still not quite as good as desktops (one reason being a few years of optimization vs just a few months) but much better than it was before.

Lesson is, know and understand your prospects whether they are using a desktop or a smart phone. Adjust campaigns accordingly.

As a Canadian, I don't know if we use cell phones more than Americans. I don't know if the penetration here is higher or not. I don't have one myself but my brother-in-law does and seems he does everything on it. I think that if you have one, you'll tend to use it often since it's right there. My brother has one too but uses it less often, basically as a phone, since, like me, he spends more time in front of a computer for work. It all depends I guess on your lifestyle. But I don't see this as a reason for raising bids for Canadians.