Have you ever wished you could apply automated bidding to part of your campaign while manually bidding on other keywords in the same campaign? Or maybe you’ve wanted to apply a single bid strategy to some keywords, but they’re in different campaigns? Now you can with flexible bid strategies, available in the next couple weeks when you
upgrade to an enhanced campaign. Flexible bid strategies let you apply multiple bidding strategies within a single campaign or across campaigns. This provides you the freedom to choose the appropriate bid strategy without being constrained by account structure.
Control and insights with new flexible bid strategies
Ramping up over the next couple weeks, flexible bid strategies can be found in the Shared library (see image below). Once you’ve created a flexible bid strategy, you can apply it to specific keywords, ad groups, and campaigns and monitor its performance.
Here’s more information about what each flexible bid strategy does and when you can use it:
Flexible bid strategy
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What it does
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When to use it
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Target search page location
(new bid strategy)
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Automatically tries to get your ads to the top of the page, or onto the first page of search results
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+ When you want more visibility on the first page of Google Search results or in the top positions
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Maximize clicks
(flexible version of Automatic Bidding)
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Automatically sets bids to get you the most clicks, within a target spend amount that you choose
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+ When site visits are your primary goal
+ When you want to maximize traffic on long tail terms and keep to a certain spend
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Target CPA
(flexible version of Conversion Optimizer)
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Automatically sets bids to get you as many conversions as possible while reaching your target average CPA goal
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+ When you want to get the most conversions at your target CPA
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Enhanced CPC
(flexible version of Enhanced CPC)
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Automatically adjusts your manual bid up or down based on each click’s likelihood to result in a conversion
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+ When conversions are the main objective, but you also want control over keyword bids
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Some of our bid strategies incorporate real-time details during each auction such as device, location, and other context signals to adjust your bids based on your ad’s predicted performance. This approach offers the potential for even better performance. Target CPA and Enhanced CPC use this technology today, and it will be incorporated into other bidding strategies in the future.
Customizing the new flexible bid strategies to work for you
Flexible bid strategies let you apply a bid strategy to keywords across separate campaigns, or test multiple bid strategies within a single campaign. Say, for example, you run a network security consulting business. You might have some keywords like ‘network security’ in multiple campaigns focused on generating awareness for your business. You can apply the Target search page location bidding strategy to those specific keywords regardless of where they are in your account, to keep them in top positions. Then let’s say you have another campaign mainly aimed at lead generation with keywords like ”perimeter network security audit,” but which also has some awareness building keywords, too, like “perimeter network security best practices.” In this campaign, you can use the Target CPA bidding strategy for the lead generation ad groups and use the Target search page location bidding strategy for the awareness building keywords.
You can learn more about flexible bid strategies by visiting our
help center. As with all types of automation, we recommend that you periodically monitor your bid strategies’ performance relative to your advertising goals.
In addition to new features like flexible bid strategies and
support for many-per-click conversions in Conversion Optimizer, we’re working on more optimization features to help you more easily achieve your advertising goals, like return on ad spend. Let us know what you think of these new flexible bid strategies on our
Ads Google+ page and stay tuned for more to come.
Posted by Andrea Cohan, Product Marketing Manager, AdWords
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