So, there you have it. Device targeting can be confusing at first, but when you get acquainted, it can take your PPC advertising game to the next level. Try experimenting with different settings, and embrace the analysis side of things to learn more about reaching your audience on each device.

1. What is Google Ads
Device Targeting?
Imagine you sell mobile phone accessories, and
wish to show ads to people who own a specific
type of mobile device.
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How Analytics Improves Google Ads Device Targeting
Imagine you sell mobile phone accessories, and wish to show ads to people who own a specific type of
mobile device. In Google Ads, you can create an ad that focuses on that device. This is known as device
targeting or device model targeting.
However, with so many devices on the market, it’s easy to show your ads on the wrong ones, which
results in a flood of irrelevant traffic and wasted spend.
So, how do you determine what works for a specific device in your marketing funnel, and what doesn’t?
Before we delve into the logistics of analysis, it’s essential first to understand how a proper marketing
funnel functions.

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Key Stages of the Buyer’s Journey: Device Targeting Preparation
The marketing funnel predicts the buyer’s journey and also incorporates its key stages: awareness,
consideration, and decision.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these stages to gain a clearer understanding of your marketing funnel
and the buyer’s journey.
Awareness – In the first stage of every advertising campaign, the objective is to develop brand
recognition among audiences, and gauge your campaign process. At this stage, you must also measure
your campaign’s clicks, impressions, and engagements.

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Key Stages of the Buyer’s Journey: Device Targeting Preparation
Consideration – The next stage is where you can switch your focus from creating brand awareness to
generating leads. This involves developing relevant and engaging content to encourage your audience to
purchase the products or services you’re offering. Here, you must consider your clickthroughs and
engagements.
Decision – This is the final goal of every ad campaign as it deals with conversions – the action you have
defined as valuable to your business. You can use reports to analyze the conversions and costs of
different device types.
Make sure you measure the device performance during each stage of your customer’s journey. This will
help you determine whether the device is working correctly for a specific campaign.

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Awareness Stage: Device Analysis
The awareness stage is located at the top of the funnel, where you’re investing in brand awareness. At
this stage, it’s vital to identify what device your target audience is using the most. For instance, if you’re
marketing a desktop-based item, it makes the most sense to create the ad delivery to reach your desktop
users.
Here are some metrics to measure for device targeting during the awareness stage:
• Impression share – Identify the device that is generating the majority of your impression shares based
on search volume.
• Top impression percentage – This metric tells you how many of your impressions were in the top
positions above the fold on the search engine result pages (SERPs).

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Awareness Stage: Device Analysis
• Absolute top impression percentage – This shows what percentage of your total impression share is
from when your ad was in the very top position in SERPs, and it also measures the quality of the
impressions as well.
• Lost IS (Lost Impression Share) – Identify how many potential impressions you are losing on various
devices.
• Impressions breakdown by device – This tells you if you’re getting your impressions on the device you
had bid on in your campaign. You can view impressions by categories, such as geographical location,
hours of the day, and the days of the week. These breakdowns help you discover keywords that work
well (or not so well) for your device.
• Exact match impression share (EMIS) – This will help you better understand your audience by the
device they are using. You can analyze the EMIS by keyword match type, and conduct a historical
analysis of the EMIS to identify meaningful patterns.
• Which hour of the day is best/worst – This is in respect to EMIS for your device.

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Awareness Stage: Device Analysis
Actionable Decisions:
• Pinpointing the best combination of geographical location, the hour of the day and day of the week
for a specific device will give you the perfect candidate for your bid increase. By conducting a
thorough historical analysis for two weeks, you’ll notice patterns that will guide your decision-making.
• Find the worst combination and mark it for a bid reduction. Again, a historical analysis will show you
patterns to help make this decision.
• If the device type is irrelevant, stop bidding on it. For instance, if you’re displaying your ad on mobiles,
but your landing page isn’t optimized for mobile yet, you’ll see a lot of bounces.
• Search queries that match perfectly with your keywords may serve as good candidates for your new
keywords.

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Consideration Stage: Device Analysis
Here are some vital device targeting metrics to measure when you’re device analysis point of your
marketing funnel. This stage correlates with the consideration stage of the customer journey.
• Clicks – This measures which devices are generating the most clicks. You can determine if the click
data develops a pattern, and identify which geographical location, time of day, and the day of the
week are the best and worst for getting ad clicks. Also, you can determine which ad positions gain the
most clicks,
• Cost – This metric shows which device yields cheaper clicks. It also analyzes the impact of match
types, hours of the day, day of the week, geo-location, and keywords to pinpoint the most cost-
effective combinations for specific devices.
• Wasted spend – This shows which device and dimension combinations are wasting the most amount
of your campaign budget.

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Consideration Stage: Device Analysis
Actionable Decisions
• Bid high on devices that are generating cheap clicks and not causing wasted spend.
• Remove geographical locations that are generating expensive clicks/causing waste.
• Reduce hour of the day (HOD) and day of the week (DOW) bids that are generating expensive clicks
and wasted spend.
• Increase bids on keywords that are attracting cheaper clicks based on your historical analysis research.
Reduce bids on expensive/wasteful keywords.
• Measure any invalid clicks and stop fraudulent ad clicks.

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Decision Stage: Device Analysis
Here are some critical device targeting metrics to measure when you’re at the decision stage or device
analysis point of your marketing funnel and customer journey.
• Conversion – This measures which devices are generating conversion, and which geographical
location, keywords, and match type work best for the specific device.
• Cost per conversion – To understand which device is generating cheaper conversions.
• Conversion Rate – To identify devices generating good conversion rates, and poor conversion rates at
GEO, HOD, and DOW.
• Return on Advertising Spend – This helps you determine which devices generate the best return on
your investment. It considers keywords, geo-locations, and peak times, and days. You can use it to
identify opportunities for profit for each device, and also to learn about pitfalls to avoid.

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Decision Stage: Device Analysis
Actionable Decisions
• Bid higher on profitable devices, Geo-locations, and DOW
• Bid higher on profitable keywords
• Focus on conversion rate optimization for devices lacking in profitability.

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5 Benefits of a Device Performance Report
It is essential to your ad campaign to understand the performance trends of each device. Choosing to use
a device performance report comes with many benefits:
Performance Indicators – the color of this marker indicates performance comparisons of metrics taken
over a specific time. While red indicates lowered performance, green suggests an improvement.
Graphical Representation – this provides information on performance trends across specific parameters.
Historical and Current Data comparison – This determines what has changed over a certain amount of
time, which is necessary for tracking performance trends.

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5 Benefits of a Device Performance Report
Improved Device Targeting – Using insights for the day, time, and daily trend charts can help pinpoint the
setup and settings that work best for your ad.
Segmented Analysis – PPCexpo reports offer a segmented analysis of each phase. The Device
Performance report is designed to measure three campaign segments to simplify the complexities of PPC
performance measurement. Therefore, this report can assist you in creating your most accurate and
successful campaign yet.

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Wrap Up
So, there you have it. Device targeting can be confusing at first, but when you get acquainted, it can take
your PPC advertising game to the next level.
Try experimenting with different settings, and embrace the analysis side of things to learn more about
reaching your audience on each device.

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