Bing Ads rolled out tablet-related device targeting changes in October of last year. Beginning March 23rd, the engine will further consolidate by adding smartphones into a single, combined device targeting option that uses bid modifiers to help manage traffic from various sources.
Once the migration is complete, with a single campaign setup, you will automatically reach people across the Yahoo Bing Network wherever they are searching (i.e. smartphones, tablets or PCs), while using the controls you need to help you meet your goals.
What Exactly Is Changing?
Instead of selecting individual devices and operating systems for your ads to target, you will automatically receive traffic from all devices. You will be to apply bid adjustments to increase or decrease your bid for traffic coming from different devices.
This table shows the bid adjustments that are available and the differences between Google AdWords.
*Photo provided by Bing.
The major difference lies with tablet bidding. Unlike Google, users can set a different bid modifier for tablets. The negative modifier only goes to 20%, but it’s a start.
How Will Your Campaigns Be Affected?
The migration will affect all campaigns that are currently targeting mobile only or PC/tablet only.
Here is a table that illustrates the changes for different campaign types:
*Photo provided by Bing.
Why The Change?
The goal is to help you connect with users regardless of where they are searching, and make it as easy as possible to manage your campaigns across search engines. Bing states that mobile searchers drive over 30% of the searches on the Yahoo Bing Network. You may be missing the opportunity to connect with valuable new customers if mobile is not currently part of your campaign targeting.
What Steps Do I Need To Take?
The most important action to take right now is reviewing your campaigns to determine if they are targeting either mobile devices only or PC/tablet devices only. If you do, look a little deeper to see if you have more than one campaign targeting the same keyword (for example: a mobile-only campaign targeting the keyword “sunglasses” and a separate PC/tablet campaign also targeting the keyword “sunglasses”).
If you have multiple campaigns targeting the same keyword, you will need to combine them into a single campaign before Bing starts the migration process. If you don’t, Bing will automatically add additional device targets to your existing campaigns, and you will risk having multiple campaigns targeting the same keyword.
The second step to take is to create a mobile-friendly landing page or website. Then, you’ll need to add {if mobile/if not mobile} query string parameters in your destination URLs to ensure that you are driving traffic to the correct destination.
For more information and to see what the new interface will look like, check out the Unified Device Targeting Frequently Asked Questions.
