How to check Google Ads performance by device 

For the majority of digital marketing, we live in a mobile first world. We all know that Google uses a site’s mobile version for ranking on the organic Search Engine Results Pages. That’s for good reason. 

Nearly 60% of all internet traffic is via mobile devices and around 55% of searches are done on a mobile device. 

Those numbers are growing year on year. 

Advertising on Google Ads is no different. Just over 50% of all Google Ads clicks happen on mobile devices. 

Are you optimising your PPC ad landing page for mobile devices? A one size fits all landing page for both desktop and mobile device users is rarely the best strategy. 

User behaviour differs wildly by device type. Mobile searches tend to be more informational or research based and sit at the top of the funnel. Desktop searches lean more towards transitional and sit further down the funnel. This means mobile devices typically have a lower conversion rate than desktop devices. 

These aren’t hard and fast rules that apply all the time, but they are often the case for considered ecommerce transactions. 

Data from sources like the KIBO Ecommerce Quarterly Benchmarks report reveals that mobile users are not as likely to convert as those on desktop 

Plus, despite mobile and desktop users having roughly the same add-to-cart rates, mobile users convert at nearly half the rate of desktop. 

If you’re spending money on Google ads, having a mobile optimised landing page could bring a bigger return on your investment. To do this, you need to approach desktop and mobile PPC traffic differently. 

All that being said, the first step is to identify whether there is a problem that needs fixing. 

Why would you need to know Google Ads performance by device? 

If you treat each user as the same, regardless of device, you are running the risk of wasting your ad budget on clicks that are simply not converting. 

The Google Ads dashboard you see when you login uses data from all devices. Your lower performing devices are impacting this data with out you knowing it. 

Using device data, you can gauge how successful (or not) your mobile landing pages are at converting traffic. With this information you can decide whether device specific landing pages are required, and if so, how they then perform better than a one-size fits all approach to the landing page. 

How to create a Google Ads device performance report 

Thankfully, this is a really easy report to set up. Follow these steps: 

Login to Google Ads 

Click on the “Reports” icon in the top navigation bar and then “Reports” in the drop down 

Click “+ Custom” and then choose a ‘Column chart’

In ‘Search metrics and dimensions’ search for ‘Device’ and choose ‘Device’. 

Do the same for ‘CTR’ (Click through Rate’) and ‘Conv. rate’. These will tell you the relative click through rate and conversation rate for your campaigns/ad groups. Note: I choose these rather than absolute numbers because it can be difficult to compare performance if one device has significantly higher numbers than another. 

You should have a report like this… 

This is using data for all your campaigns which isn’t very useful if you have more than one. 

To display data for one campaign or ad group, click on ‘Filter’. 

Choose the type of filter you want to apply (in this example I’m choosing ‘Campaign’) and the criteria you want to filter by. 

You now have a report to show how well your campaigns are performing across devices 🎉 

Note: Don’t forget to click ‘Save’ before you leave the page!