When setting up and running an ad, you are able to select the device types that you’d like to advertise to.
I spent funds advertising for mobile and tablet but my experience doesn’t have access for those devices enabled. I did not notice and I do not know how this affected my advertisement campaigns over the last few weeks.
I wonder if this can be used to manipulate better results out of the advertising system, or if I am just shooting myself in the foot for not noticing. This is probably a bad experience for users who are being advertised to.
Expected behavior
I expect to be restricted from advertising to devices that are not able to access the experience, or to atleast be warned when setting up the ad campaign.
It’s taken us a while - but we have spent a fair amount of time addressing this and other issues with the new simplified campaign creation. If you use the new ads manager - by default we will optimize towards getting you the most plays so our advertisers don’t have as much guesswork to get the best results for your spend.
In the case you described above - for many of our ad types we only charge for plays. So you will not be charged for any users who happen to see your ad but cannot enter your game.
Device targeting is a targeting option that can be used for optimization if you have unique data about what platform your ad should be shown to (for example if your experience has a mobile only mechanic - you would ideally optimize your ad spend on mobile ad spots). But in general we recommend using the simplified campaign creation as we believe in almost all cases it will get you the best results.