In early February, I hosted a Hanapin Marketing Webinar about the State of Mobile in 2017 and discussed numerous mobile changes and details to help take our mobile strategies to the next level. Since that discussion, I have continued to strategize on how I can improve results with the ever-changing landscape of mobile and desktop advertising over the past few years.
Both Google and Bing implemented segmented bidding options in 2016, allowing for the original enhanced campaign bid adjustment options back into campaign strategies. This includes separate desktop, mobile, and tablet bidding at both the campaign and ad group level.
In today’s post, I wanted to give some thoughts on why starting to flip the main bids to mobile and utilizing adjustments for desktop could be a tactic to test in your 2017 mobile plan.
Device Spend In 2017
This is all in lead up in the continued move of digital marketing spend towards mobile advertising. According to an eMarketer study and projections show 2017 is truly the “year of mobile”. Spend will finally topple desktop spend 60/40. 2016 wasn’t too far behind and was as close to 50/50 spend ratios. Projections show that by 2021, we could see mobile taking up 84% of the budget. Even in 2018, a year away, mobile spend is projected at almost 70%.
Bidding Mindset
This is where I started thinking through the current mobile opportunities across multiple accounts; lower CPC, lower cost per conversion, higher conversion rates, and started to create a hypothesis that maybe we are starting to look at what we set bids at for mobile and looking at how to adjust desktop bid adjustment percentages to compensate. Instead of the long-run desktop bid with mobile bid adjustments. The only way to start becoming a mobile-centric account is to begin testing and implement a mobile bidding strategy. In the social realm, like Facebook, mobile is already the main driver, as apps and mobile devices are used prominently.
This process should be tested and monitored for results, looking at cross-device conversions and using device reporting to find the right balance of bids and adjustment percentages across all devices to find the right balance. My projection is that by the end of 2017, through continued testing, mobile-specific messaging, IF Functions, and continued mobile ad extensions, the mobile bidding mindset will continue to change and become the predominate bidding method.
