Comments on: Adwords by Browser Type or OS?

By: Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:04:30 +0000

You could have your own website recognize the OS and if the visitor is not using that OS display a landing page pushing a comparable product for the visitors OS. Won’t work so well for very specialized software but for the big markets there should be lots of alternatives.

By: oldenstylehats

oldenstylehats — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:54:19 +0000

Conference targeting by geo-location and OS. Targeting more general terms like “video editor,” “new computer,” and “RAM upgrade” to the appropriate audience. Oddly enough, just yesterday someone purchased an application from us that explicitly states that it only runs on OS X. A few minutes later he contacted me asking why he wasn’t able to open the files. It isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Perhaps if I had the ability to target the right users, the customer’s experience would have been a positive one and we wouldn’t have paid for the click that might have lead to such assumptions.

By: QuadsZilla

QuadsZilla — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:47:40 +0000

Taking it further, Maybe I just want to decide that Apple users are willing to spend more money for quality than windows users. If they bought a Mac, they will probably be less turned on by ‘cheap’ as a keyword than your average user.

By: oldenstylehats

oldenstylehats — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:39:50 +0000

This is an exceptionally good idea, QZ. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m surprised that Google hasn’t thought to implement this before. I can think of a few ways this could be misused, but the value to software and plug-in developers would considerably outweigh any negative consequences that I can foresee.

By: QuadsZilla

QuadsZilla — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:07:07 +0000

The same thing goes for browser type: if I’m promoting a Windows Toolbar, I don’t want firefox surfers and certainly don’t want Safari surfers.

Oh – and does the same thing hold for Yahoo?

By: QuadsZilla

QuadsZilla — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:02:51 +0000

That’s what I thought: Hey Google! That’s weak. Fix it!

I want to sell an apple application and don’t want to pay for Windows surfers. The price people (like me) will pay per click will be higher. Same if I were selling a windows app – I wouldn’t buy the ads for OSX surfers, and therefore would have more money to spend per click.

By: S0uther

S0uther — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:31:23 +0000

Up until a few days ago the answer would be a flat ‘NO’. Recently however Google Adwords added a feature to target by mobile OS (other than WAP/xhtml/chtml); specifically if you wanted to allow your Campaign to be served to those who were running a mobile OS but a browser which still identified itself as a full ’screen’ device. Today this would be only the iPhone and the G1. Other then this option (which is available in the Campaign options only), there is no way to segment and serve ads only to a certain OS and/or Browser type. The Google suggested way to handle this is to only target keyword phrases which would qualify the user, include text in your ad which would inform the user of the requirements, and/or serve up a different offer by doing your own User Agent sniffing on the page/server.