Extend your mobile reach with Same Device Targeting

Learn how to use Same Device Targeting

To extend your mobile reach and improve your performance on app inventory, you can target mobile web users on mobile app inventory with Same Device Targeting. This feature applies at the bidder level and includes all child seats.

How Same Device Targeting works

For app impressions where Google is able to connect a mobile device identifier (IDFA for iOS, advertising ID for Android) with a mobile web cookie for the same device, Authorized Buyers removes the IDFA or advertising ID from the bid request and replaces it with the matching mobile web cookie ID for the same device.

As these app impressions include a mobile web cookie ID, you can use that cookie ID for user targeting, frequency capping, and other aspects of your bidding methodology.


To maximize effectiveness, Authorized Buyers determines the form of user identification that your bidder finds most valuable for that user, based on your bidding history, and provides that identifier in the bid request for the app impression. Because of this, some app impressions continue to send the IDFA or advertising ID in the bid request as normal, and are not replaced with a mobile web cookie ID.

In any situation, Authorized Buyers does not provide both the IDFA or advertising ID and the mobile web cookie ID in the same bid request -- only one or the other. Buyers cannot specify which users Authorized Buyers should or should not apply this feature against.

Enable Same Device Targeting in your bidder

Prior to being activated for Same Device Targeting, review the best practices to buy mobile on Authorized Buyers and ensure that your bidder complies with the following:

  • Able to receive and respond to bid requests for app inventory.

    This solution does not work properly if your pretargeting configuration is set up to target a list of desktop or mobile web sites, a list of desktop or mobile web cookies, or anything else that would restrict your bidder from being able to receive bid requests for app inventory. If necessary, you can set up a new pretargeting configuration to target app inventory.

  • Able to interpret and respond to bid requests for app inventory that do not include an IDFA or advertising ID value.

    When Authorized Buyers applies this feature to an app impression, the encrypted_advertising_id field may be empty.

  • Able to use the google_user_id or hosted_match value in a bid request for an app impression.

    When Authorized Buyers applies this feature to an app impression, the google_user_id or hosted_match value is based off the mobile web cookie. The bidder should be able to ingest and use this value.

Contact your Authorized Buyers representative to begin the activation process.

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