Google Ads Bid Adjustments: Device, Time and Location

1. What Google Ads Bid Adjustments Actually Do

Quick Answer: A bid adjustment is a percentage that moves your bid up or down when a search matches a condition — a device, a time slot, a location, an audience. A RM 4 bid with a +25% mobile adjustment becomes RM 5 on a phone. It changes the bid, never the targeting.

That last line matters more than anything else on this page. Google Ads bid adjustments do not add or remove targeting. Setting −60% for Sabah does not stop your ads showing in Sabah; it only makes you bid less there, so you win fewer auctions. The single exception is a −100% device adjustment, which does exclude that device.

Google publishes the ranges, and they differ by type:

Ranges per Google’s About bid adjustments documentation.

Note the asymmetry. Device can be cut to −100%; location and ad schedule stop at −90%. You can nearly switch off a time slot or a state, never fully. And location adjustments live at campaign level only — one more reason how you structure campaigns quietly decides what you can control later.

2. Your Bid Strategy Decides Whether Any of This Works

Quick Answer: Smart Bidding does not use manual bid adjustments. Under Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize conversions or Maximize conversion value, your location and ad schedule percentages are ignored. Only Maximize clicks and manual CPC honour the full set — which is why checking the strategy comes before setting anything.

Google states it plainly: under Smart Bidding, a manual bid adjustment “won’t be supported”. The system already reads device, location, time of day and dozens of other signals in every auction, so a fixed +20% would be a blunt instrument sitting on top of a live one.

What survives, per strategy:

Summarised from Google’s bid adjustment eligibility tables.

Two details are easy to miss. Under Target CPA, a device adjustment changes the target rather than the bid — a +20% mobile adjustment tells Google you accept a 20% higher cost per conversion on phones. And Smart Bidding still obeys the ad schedule itself: the hours you set are respected, only the percentages are not.

3. Device: The One Adjustment Malaysian Accounts Still Need

Quick Answer: Device is the only adjustment that keeps some power under Smart Bidding — as a target modifier on Target CPA, and as a −100% exclusion everywhere else. In Malaysia, where phones dominate search, that exclusion is almost never the right move on mobile. Tablet is a different story.

Malaysia is a mobile market by any measure. DataReportal’s Digital 2026: Malaysia report counts 44.0 million active cellular connections — 122% of the population — with 99.3% of them on 3G, 4G or 5G. Your buyer is searching on a phone, in a car park, with one thumb.

What that looks like inside ZenWeb-managed Search campaigns:

Desktop converts better and costs less per lead, which tempts owners into a heavy negative mobile adjustment. Resist it. Three-quarters of the clicks are on phones; cutting mobile does not move those buyers to a laptop, it hands them to a competitor.

Usually the weak part is mobile conversion tracking, not mobile intent. Calls and WhatsApp taps go uncounted, so mobile reads worse than it performs — fixable with proper conversion tracking for calls and WhatsApp leads, and worth reading alongside how phone leads work now that call-only ads are ending.

Tablet is the one place a −100% is often justified: 4% of clicks and the worst cost per lead of the three.

4. Ad Schedule: When Malaysian Leads Actually Arrive

Quick Answer: Ad schedule adjustments run from −90% to +900% and are set at campaign level. Smart Bidding ignores the percentages but still obeys the hours you set — so the schedule is a targeting decision, not a bidding one, for most accounts.

Leads do not arrive evenly. Across our client base, enquiries cluster around the working day and the early evening, and the small hours are expensive:

The overnight block looks like an easy −90%. Before you set it, ask what happens to a lead that arrives at 2am and gets no reply until 10am. In most SMEs it goes cold — which makes it a follow-up problem, not a bidding one. If nobody can answer, pausing those hours beats bidding low in them.

Two related levers behave differently and are worth keeping separate in your head: an ad schedule shapes an ordinary week, while seasonality adjustments tell Smart Bidding about a short-lived spike such as a Raya or 11.11 promotion.

5. Location: Klang Valley Versus Everywhere Else

Quick Answer: Location bid adjustments run from −90% to +900%, sit at campaign level, and are ignored by Smart Bidding. Where two locations overlap, only the most specific one applies — a +100% for Petaling Jaya overrides a +50% for Selangor, it does not stack on top.

Malaysian performance is not flat across the map. Cost per lead in the Klang Valley is held down by volume and competition together; the further out you go, the thinner the search demand and the more erratic the numbers:

A −40% for the East Coast looks reasonable on this table. It will also do nothing at all if the campaign runs Target CPA. When location genuinely matters to your economics — a delivery radius, a showroom, a service area — the reliable move is to split it into its own campaign with its own budget and target, rather than nudge a percentage. That is a location targeting decision first and a bidding decision second.

One more trap: adjustments do not combine for overlapping places. Set +50% for Selangor and +100% for Shah Alam, and a searcher in Shah Alam gets +100% only.

6. How Several Adjustments Stack on One Bid

Quick Answer: Different adjustment types multiply together. The combined result is capped at +900% and floored at −90%, so stacking two large increases does not double them. Two adjustments of the same type — two devices, two locations — do not multiply at all.

A worked example on a RM 4.00 bid, manual CPC, mobile searcher in Johor Bahru on a Saturday:

Two increases and one cut, and the bid ends below where it started. That is how accounts quietly bid far less than the owner believes — nobody adds the percentages up across three screens.

Where you truly want less traffic, an exclusion beats an adjustment. Opting out of Google Search Partners removes that inventory outright, which no −90% ever quite does. The same logic runs through most Google Ads money-wasting mistakes: half-measures on the bid, when the real answer was to stop showing up.

7. The Lever Is Fading — and Google Says So

Quick Answer: Nine in ten ZenWeb-managed Search campaigns now run Smart Bidding, and the share with a live manual bid adjustment has fallen by two-thirds since 2022. Targets, budgets and conversion data have taken over the job that percentages used to do.

The direction of travel is not subtle, and Google is pushing it further. From 17 August 2026, budget-limited campaigns on Target CPA or Target ROAS will deliver closer to the target you actually typed in. Campaigns that quietly beat their target — a RM 10 target hitting RM 5 — will drift back toward RM 10 unless the target is corrected first.

The whole argument fits in one line: your target is the bid lever now. That puts the weight on what feeds it.

• Conversion values. Smart Bidding optimises toward what you tell it a lead is worth — see how to set conversion values properly.
• Audience signals. Uploading your buyer list through Customer Match feeds the model better data than any +20% ever did.
• Lead capture. Fewer steps between click and enquiry lifts the conversion rate the model bids on — one reason lead form assets earn their place.
• Channel choice. Where demand must be created rather than captured, Demand Gen campaigns are a different tool — and carry no bid adjustments at all.

8. Setting Bid Adjustments Without Wrecking Performance

Quick Answer: Work in one order: confirm account access, confirm the bid strategy, check the segment has enough conversions to judge, then change one adjustment at a time and give it a fortnight. Anything faster is guessing dressed up as optimisation.

1. Confirm you own the account. You cannot audit what you cannot open — settle Google Ads account ownership and access before touching settings.
2. Check the bid strategy. On Target CPA, Target ROAS or Maximize conversions, stop here for location and schedule — those percentages do nothing.
3. Segment by device, hour and location. Pull at least 30 conversions per segment. Below that, the difference you are looking at is noise.
4. Change one thing. One adjustment, one campaign, and write down what it was before you touched it.
5. Test it properly where the spend justifies it. Google Ads experiments split traffic so you compare against a real control, not against last month’s weather.
6. Wait 14 days, then judge. Smart Bidding re-learns after any structural change; reading the first three days will send you backwards.

The budget question sits underneath all six steps. An adjustment cannot rescue a campaign that runs out of money by 2pm — that is a monthly budget decision, and it comes first.

9. Conclusion: Pull the Lever That Is Connected

Quick Answer: Google Ads bid adjustments still matter in manual CPC and Maximize clicks accounts, and device still matters everywhere. In a Smart Bidding account, the levers that move money are the target, the budget, the campaign split and the quality of your conversion data.

The best outcome from this page is that you check one screen and find that half the percentages in your account have been doing nothing for two years. Clear them out. Then spend the attention where it pays: on what a lead is worth, on the hours someone actually answers, and on a Google Ads setup built for how bidding works in 2026.

10. Frequently Asked Questions

1. Do bid adjustments still work with Smart Bidding?

Mostly no. Google states that manual bid adjustments are not supported under Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize conversions and Maximize conversion value. Location, ad schedule, audience and demographic percentages are ignored. Device survives — as a target adjustment on Target CPA, and as a −100% exclusion on the others.

2. What are the ranges for device, location and ad schedule adjustments?

Device runs from −100% to +900%, at campaign or ad group level. Location and ad schedule run from −90% to +900%, campaign level only. That is why you can switch a device off completely, but never a state or a time slot.

3. Should I set a negative mobile bid adjustment in Malaysia?

Rarely. Mobile carries about three-quarters of Search clicks across ZenWeb-managed accounts. When mobile looks weak, the cause is usually untracked calls and WhatsApp enquiries rather than weak intent. Fix the tracking first.

4. How do multiple bid adjustments combine?

Different types multiply. A +25% device adjustment with a +20% location adjustment and a −50% schedule adjustment on a RM 4 bid lands at RM 3. The combined result cannot exceed +900% or fall below −90%, and two adjustments of the same type never stack — for overlapping locations, only the most specific one applies.

5. If adjustments are ignored, how do I control performance on Target CPA?

Through the target, the budget and the structure. Give a segment that needs different economics its own campaign and target, feed accurate conversion values, and review any target that has been quietly overperforming before 17 August 2026.