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Any practical way to suppress Android traffic and keep iPhone users in Google Ads?
Posted by on January 15, 2026 at 3:16 amI’ve done a deep dive into lead quality by device and found something very consistent:
Almost all qualified leads come from:
– Desktop (Windows / Mac)
– iPhone users
Android traffic, on the other hand, accounts for ~99% of junk or spam leads.
I know that in Google Ads you can only control Desktop vs Mobile, and there’s no OS-level targeting within Mobile (iOS vs Android). That’s exactly the limitation I’m running into.
Current setup:
– B2B lead gen
– Search + PMax (PMax heavily limited)
– Mobile traffic already significantly downweighted
– Desktop performing well
– Cannot change the form or add post-click qualification
– No offline conversion imports available yet
My question:
Given these constraints, is there any *practical* way you’ve seen to further suppress Android traffic without completely killing mobile and losing iPhone users as well?
I’m mainly looking for real-world tactics, not theoretical ones. Happy to hear what has worked (or not worked) for others in similar B2B lead gen setups.
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1 Reply
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Would be curious to hear it as well. We just ended up blocking all mobile traffic + night time hours.
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I’ve run into the same pattern and never found a clean switch for it. The only things that moved the needle for me were indirect signals. Time of day and geo tweaks sometimes help since a lot of the junk Android traffic clusters oddly there. Also tightening match types and query intent reduced mobile spam more than expected, even though it sounds unrelated. Past that, device bid adjustments plus aggressive search term pruning was the least bad combo. Without offline signals or post click filters, it’s mostly damage control rather than true suppression.
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There’s no direct way to block Android, but splitting Desktop-only and Mobile-only campaigns with very low mobile bids consistently starves Android while keeping iPhone traffic. Layering strict business-hour scheduling and tighter exact-match keywords further cuts Android junk
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There’s no direct way to split iOS from Android in Google Ads but you can layer demographic and income targeting which indirectly filters out lower intent Android users since iPhone users skew higher income in most B2B verticals.
What worked for my clients in similar B2B setups was adding household income targeting at top 30-40% plus layering zip code exclusions for areas with historically high spam rates… we ran this for a software client spending $120k monthly targeting decision makers in SF Bay Area, Seattle, Austin and saw junk leads drop from 68% to about 22% while keeping cost per qualified lead under $180.
The other move is bid adjustments… set mobile at minus 40-50% which naturally reduces Android volume more than iOS because Android has way higher inventory, then let your better performing placements like desktop and tablets carry most of the budget while mobile becomes supplemental traffic.
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There’s not much you can do directly with search or P-Max as far as specific devices go.
You might consider nixing P-Max and replacing it with Demand Gen. At least in that campaign type you can target very specific devices by operating system or model. This would take care of all your non-search traffic.
You might also try either keyword and/or creative qualifiers indicating your solution is only for iOS. But of course, that’s going to disqualify your desktop traffic so you’d need to split the campaign. One campaign targeting only computers. One campaign targeting only mobile and then using the qualifiers.
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Maybe you can change your conversion tracking so that the pixels don’t fire on Android devices? Then that way the Google Algo will eventually learn that Android does not convert well and stop serving traffic and/or lower bids for Android phones
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You Can’t avoid fully Android Traffic in google ads
Exclude android app replacements
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