Device targeting
Device targeting filters traffic by device type, operating system, OS version, and sometimes the exact phone model. It decides who even reaches the PWA and offer, filtering out the rest before the landing page loads. In arbitrage it's not optional — the offer, the ad network's fraud checks, and the PWA itself all behave differently on iOS versus Android.
What device targeting usually filters
The baseline set is OS (iOS/Android), OS version, device type (phone/tablet/desktop), and sometimes vendor or browser brand. Plenty of gambling and finance offers simply aren't built for desktop traffic or for old Android versions where PWA installs behave unreliably. Emulators and virtual devices get filtered separately — they're almost always a bot signature rather than a real user.
Devices and PWA: where targeting decides conversion
Installing a PWA differs mechanically between iOS (via Safari's 'Add to Home Screen') and Android (via Chrome's install prompt), so landing copy and CTA often need separate treatment per OS. In APEX, device targeting works together with the antibot layer (filtering emulators and suspicious user agents) and with split tests, so you can compare iOS and Android conversion separately and run different prelanders per segment. Team roles (team lead/buyer) let these rules live at the campaign level instead of one blunt setting for the whole project.
FAQ
- Should desktop traffic always be excluded?
- Not always, but most mobile-first PWA offers simply don't convert on desktop, so it's usually filtered out unless the offer is explicitly built for desktop too.
- How is an emulator told apart from a real device?
- Through indirect signals — unusual user agents, no touch events, and screen resolutions typical of emulators — which is exactly what antibot checks look for during device filtering.
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