Why are mobile ads so much worse quality than desktop?

[LondonNE]

On desktop adsense shows relevant ads from big companies - amazon, ebay etc.

On mobile its utter rubbish that has no relevance to me or the site. It often seems completely random regardless of agreeing to cookies - and it long predates GDPR. Ads like shirts that cost £300 and the like. No one is going to click on them.

These appear regardless of whether I select auto ads or not.

What can I do to get better ads showing on mobile?

[NickMNS]

What are you basing this statement on? How do you know what ads are showing where and when?

[LondonNE]

I will have my laptop open then my phone at the same time to check. Done this many times. Same network. Then I've put phone on 4g and try on incognito and normal chrome again to compare. Also compared family and firends phones with my desktop.

The mobile ads are 95% of the time irrelevant rubbish whilst desktop are relevant and good quality most of the time.

[justpassing]

May be it's just because advertisers have a better ROI with desktop users, than mobile ones. As result, they place their bids on desktop users in priority.

[NickMNS]

@LondonNE I think you must have a biased view.

May be it's just because advertisers have a better ROI with desktop users,

My stats (from a publishers perspective) suggest that the best ROI is on Mobile, the most impressions, the most clicks, and a RPM that is less than desktop (lower cost).

There was a time when desktop performed much better than mobile, but in my case those days are long gone. Now I earn more on a dollar basis from mobile by 2x ratio. Desktop RPM remains higher than mobile, so it is definitely valuable traffic, but tablet, which accounts for small percentage of traffic, provides the best RPM.

Note that my experience may well be site specific. My site is designed for mobile users, ad placement and serving is optimized for these devices. If one has a typical responsive website that simply stacks content in one long column then it is very likely that no one is seeing the ads and thus no serious advertisers are bidding on those ads. Check your AVV stats.

[tangor]

All comes down to traffic. Keep it simple. Which does better for you?

Look at your users.

Mobile might be everywhere, but sometimes it is the desktop (eg at home with beer in hand) who covert better. Take a wider view as those bus riders and elevator lookie loos aren't likely to convert between bathroom breaks.

[keyplyr]

My stats (from a publishers perspective) suggest that the best ROI is on Mobile...

Mine as well.

I do a lot of promotion on SM which brings in mostly mobile traffic. Also, my type of visitors were early to not replace desktops when they EoL'd.

From those I've seen, I think most mobile ads have a more interesting presentation than their desktop counterparts, but that really depends on size and type.