Bing Ads Makes Combined Tablet-Desktop Targeting Official

Desktop and tablets are now united across paid search — with one caveat. Bing Ads has officially combined tablet and PC targeting in search campaigns on the platform, following on Google’s move to do so last year with the introduction of Enhanced Campaigns.

Bing Ads announced the changes coming to device targeting back in June. The caveat is that Bing Ads offers is a bid modifier on tablets, giving marketers the ability to increase tablet bids compared to desktop bids by 300 percent or bid down by 20 percent. This allows marketers to come close to setting up tablet-only campaigns with a +300 percent modifier. The -20 percent modifier lets marketers who see poorer performance from tablets lower their bids on that traffic — but not by much.

Now in Bing Ads campaigns that had been set to target just PCs or just tablets now target both automatically. Campaigns with tablet bid modifiers set below -20 percent are now set at that minimum.

Bing Ads will also be replacing explicit mobile device targeting with bid modifiers, as we’ve reported previously. The company says it will have more news on that front later this month.