PPC Campaigns on Mobile Devices - Good or Bad?

Yesterday afternoon, I listened to a Search Engine Watch Webcast presented by my good friend David Szetela from Clix Marketing entitled "Segmenting Your Way to PPC Success." It was Part 2 of a 2-part series on advanced PPC segmenting, and it was highly informative, which I've come to expect from David.

I have to disagree with him on one point he made, though. He advised all Google PPC advertisers to opt out of showing their ads on mobile devices with full internet browsers. I don't agree with that blanket statement. My take on this, as it usually is, is "test it."

Most of our PPC clients get poor results from mobile devices, to be sure. However, it's not true across the board. One of our clients is an apartment property management firm with properties in 10 states. This client makes extensive use of PPC to drive leads for apartment leases. And they get great results from mobile devices in Adwords.

To be specific, click-through rate for this client from mobile devices is 118% higher than click-through rate from computers. (And no, the client doesn't use Content Network advertising, so CTR isn't deflated by content impressions.) On top of that, conversion rate is 7% better on mobile devices than it is on computers, and the cost per conversion is better.

Of course, this seems logical to me, based on the client's target market. Their apartment communities appeal to a young adult demographic, and young adults are more likely to use mobile internet browsing. Also, it seems logical that someone searching for an apartment may be out driving around an area looking at apartments - and using their mobile browser to conduct searches and contact properties - thus generating a lead.

This client would have lost low-cost conversions had they opted out of placing ads on mobile devices. Like I said, this isn't true for most of our clients, but I think it's worth testing.

Have you placed your PPC ads on mobile devices? What kind of results are you getting?