Go Mobile! Series: iPad Device Targeting Now Available

As we announced earlier this month, we’ve included the iPad in our list of mobile devices with full internet browsers, making it easy for you to run your campaigns on it.

Now that we’ve finished our rigorous iPad testing, we feel confident adding the iPad to the list of mobile devices that you can target specifically. To do this, simply edit the “Devices” section in your Campaign Settings, and select the iPad under 'Advanced device and carrier options:

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A few things to keep in mind:

• If your device settings are set for desktop and laptop computers only, your ads won’t show on the iPad.
• If you’re already targeting selected mobile devices (such as iPhone or Android), your ads won’t show on the iPad. Make sure to select the iPad as well if you want to include it in your device-targeted campaign.

Also, remember that you can promote your iPhone/iPad or Android apps directly by linking to the download URL in your ads. This way people can download your app straight from your ads. To make things easier, we’ll handle the device targeting automatically when these ads show on mobile devices.

We’re excited to see the iPad and other innovative devices come to market and will continue to improve AdWords to help you reach and connect with your audience and your customers!

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Go Mobile! Series: Understand your click-to-call options

Our mobile phones are with us for a large part of the day. When you're on the go and there's no time to turn on a laptop or computer, it's natural to reach for your phone when you need to conduct a search, especially now that many phones have the capability to access the Internet. According to the Kelsey Group, there are currently 54.5 million mobile Internet users in the United States, representing 25% of online users. Since mobile is such a great way to connect with these potential customers, we'd like to ensure you have the tools you need to make your mobile campaigns relevant and useful to someone on-the-go.

One of the main features distinguishing a phone from a laptop or computer is its ability to make calls. With mobile click-to-call, Google allows customers to connect with businesses directly from their ads. It's easy to include click-to-call phone numbers in your ads, regardless of which type of phone the customer is using. We've discussed enabling click-to-call for devices with full Internet browses in this post about using a national phone number and this post about location extensions, but want to be sure you don't miss out on this feature when targeting users with WAP devices as well.

Click-to-call on WAP devices
The majority of mobile phones currently have WAP browsers. Originally, targeting these types of phones meant creating a mobile-specific webpage. But, if you include a click-to-call phone number in your ad, you don't need a website at all to advertise on these phones. With WAP devices, a click-to-call phone number will appear as a 'call' link at the end of your ad text. Simply include this feature in your ad if you'd like to enable customers to connect with your business by phone.

Visit the Help Center to learn more about setting up click-to-call phone numbers in mobile ads that appear on WAP devices.

Whether you're trying to reach people using devices with full Internet browsers or those on WAP phones, click-to-call offers an additional way for you to connect with all types of potential customers.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

Go Mobile! Series: Your ads on the iPad

Like many of you, we’re excited about the upcoming release of Apple’s iPad and the promise of tablet computers. Innovative products like the iPad are on the cutting edge of a whole new class of devices that promise to make accessing information and content easier and more fun.

Over the past year, we’ve been working to make sure that our advertising products work well on a different class of exciting new devices - mobile phones with full Internet browsers like the iPhone and those running Android. These mobile devices have exploded in popularity, and have allowed advertisers to achieve incremental reach and great results. With these high-end phones making up 50% of mobile search queries, it’s highly valuable for advertisers to connect with these users.

In many ways, an iPad is more similar to these mobile devices than to desktop and laptop computers. It runs on a mobile operating system, has a touchscreen, runs mobile apps, and is highly portable, suited for on-the-go browsing. For this reason we’ve decided for now to include the iPad as a mobile device in AdWords, which means that as AdWords advertisers, you can easily extend the reach of your current ad campaigns to these new types of devices.

To ensure that your ads appear on new mobile devices like the iPad, simply make sure that you have “all mobile devices” selected in your campaign settings under the “Networks and devices” section. You can also use the default setting, "All available devices."

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If you want to target the iPad specifically, our engineers are busy at work doing the final testing on an option to enable you to do just that. It will appear in the coming days when you choose to “target only selected mobile devices”. And don’t worry - if you’ve already changed your AdWords settings to not appear on these mobile devices, your ads won’t appear on the iPad.

Of course, the world of devices like the iPad is in its infancy, and these devices may evolve in ways that we haven’t anticipated yet. So we’ll continue to watch the space and ensure that no matter which direction the devices go in next, we'll make sure to give advertisers the reach, control and features they’ll need to get great results from their ad campaigns.

Posted by Paul Feng, Group Product Manager for Google Mobile Ads