How to get the best out of Smart Bidding suite and how to use Google’s machine learning expertise for measurement and targeting.
Smart Bidding strategies include the following key points:
- Visibility – Target: Outranking share/Search page location
- Website Click – Maximize clicks
- Conversion/Sales CPA/eCPC/Maximise conversions
- Revenue: Return on AdWords spend (ROAS)
Smart Bidding is all about thinking in real time and optimising at scale. Not all machine learning is created equal, as Google says “Google smart bidding relies on Google Brain to power our machine learning driven algorithms.”
From Googles smart bidding it allows us to be quicker and makes it easier to innovate. This includes the following: More signals, better signals: Google’s Smart Bidding includes signals unique to Google’s data set, including cross device users, hyper local geo, highly targeted user interests, a deep understanding of contextual signals, in-market data, and more accurate demo info.
HOW DOES GOOGLE SMART BIDDING ACTUALLY WORK?
The search engine Google uses three unique data sets to find the best combination for creating the bids, which are: Signals from the user, signals from you and signals from Google.
Google will take these three signals and its machine learning technology will work on all the data sets. Google will then analyse the signals and come up with the best individual bid for each auction. With Google’s smart bidding, it’s so much more advanced in optimising than any human because they count all above three signals.
Target CPA: What should you do with it?
| Search | |
| Bids | Set target CPA based on historical performance (Average CPA over the last 30 days) |
| Goals | Increase conversions within the set target CPA. |
| Conversions | Ensure you exclude conversions you do not want to optimise toward from the conversion column. |
| Bid Modifiers | Target CPA will handle all modifiers. |
| Best practise | Avoid making target changes more frequently than every 14 days and with a change of less than 10% to targets. |
Target ROAS: What should you do with it?
| Search | Shopping |
| Bids | Set Target ROAS based on historical performance (Average ROAS over last 30 days) |
| Goals | Achieve higher value conversions within exceeding your targeted return on ad spend (ROAS). |
| Conversions | Ensure you exclude conversions you do not want to optimise toward from the conversions column. |
| Bid modifiers | Troas will take handle all modifiers. |
| Best practise | Avoid making target changes more frequently than every 14 days and with a change of less than 10% to target. |
Maximise Conversions: What should you do with it?
| Search | Shopping |
| Bids | Set daily budget for campaign. |
| Goals | To get as many conversions at the lowest possible CPA. |
| Conversions | Ensure you exclude conversions you do not want to optimise toward from the conversions column. |
| Bid modifiers | Maximise conversions will take of all modifiers. |
| Best practise | Use maximise conversions on campaigns that are budget limited or new campaigns without a historical CPA. |
ECPC: What should I do with it?
| Search | Shopping | |
| Bids | Average CPC to remain below max CPC before mods applied with no % increase to max CPC. | |
| Goals | Increase conversions at the same CPA as manual bidding. | Increase conversions within the same overall spend. |
| Bid Modifiers | ECPC will take care of all bids except devices, which you should continue to manage. | |
| Best Practice | Set Max CPC at a level you are comfortable with, the average CPC overtime will not exceed this. | |
WHAT IS CONVERSION LAG?
Conversion lag is a delay in an amount of time it takes for a click to result into a conversion. The total amount of time from when the “last click” happened until the conversion. There can be a large delay from the last click, as AdWords will count a conversion happening after the last click within your conversion window.
Google suggests people do not use last click; this is because your time lag is from the first click rather than the last click. By following Googles recommendation, you will have a shorter amount of delay.
AUTOMATED BIDDING DURING BUSY PERIODS (CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS, JANUARY SALES)
Popular days of the year for users searching on Google would be Black Friday, December and January. For the popular shopping day, Black Friday is known as the short spike due to the period of the sales only being one day. Google suggests all AdWords advertisers to turn off Target CPA bidding enabling to maximise conversions. During the busy periods, usually the CPC normally will increase due to high demand of adverts on the search engine. Google recommends you using Enhanced Cost-Per-Click during these periods, as Google will automatically raise yours bid each time your ad is eligible to show. This is based on how likely the click is to lead to a conversion.
Over a longer period of time, for example from Boxing Day sales up to January sales, Google suggests using Target CPA bidding strategy, as this sets bids to help gain as many conversions as possible. Also avoid making any big changes to any bids due to the change in popularity in the ads.
Also, the most important factor when considering this would be watching out for campaigns with budget warnings. Performance is best when budgets allow headroom. Maximise conversions is the best alternative where all budgets must stay fixed.