Every advertising platform has some level of automatic bidding.
The decision to give ad platforms control over bids has gone from being a firm disapproval to being “context.”
When implemented properly, automated bidding can outperform human-managed bidding.
Goals that don’t match your budget may cause automated bidding to fail.
Additionally, automatic bidding will prevent certain settings from affecting campaigns.
So it makes sense for Caterina from Oslo to wonder:
“Does it still make sense to use Google’s automated bid strategies to adjust location, time, segmentation, and device bids?”
In this issue of Ask PPC, we’ll cover:
- The difference between manual, smart, and automatic bidding.
- Which bid strategies allow manual adjustments.
- When manual vs. automation makes sense.
What’s the difference between manual, smart, and automatic bidding?
Manual bidding is the most straightforward: Advertisers set bids and use bid adjustments to direct budgets toward or away from people, places, times, and devices.
Advertisers can choose to use scripts to automate manual bidding, so it’s closer to real-time bidding in automatic/smart bidding.
Smart Bidding Focus on “smart” goals such as conversions or return on ad spend (ROAS).
These bid strategy Only advertisers are allowed to adjust budget and target parameters (target CPA and ROAS).
While you can still tweak some settings, they don’t focus your budget on or away from people, places, times, and devices.
Automatic bidding focuses on all other goals, such as target impression share and clicks.
These bidding strategies allow advertisers to adjust their budgets and increase their bid caps.
Other than that, they have the same manual adjustment limitations as Smart Bidding.
Which bid strategies allow manual adjustments?
It’s difficult to keep track of exactly what adjustments are available for all bid strategies.
Here’s a breakdown of each feature:
Manual (ecpc)
- Aggressive bid adjustments (increase bids): device, location, audience, and schedule.
- Partial negative bid adjustments (lower bids): device, location, audience, and schedule.
- Fully Negative Bid Adjustment (Exclusion): Device, Location, Audience, and Schedule.
Maximize clicks
- Aggressive bid adjustments: None.
- Partial Negative Bid Adjustment: None.
- Fully Negative Bid Adjustment (Exclusion): Device, Location, Audience, and Schedule.
target impression share
- Aggressive bid adjustments: None.
- Partial Negative Bid Adjustment: None.
- Fully Negative Bid Adjustment (Exclusion): Device, Location, Audience, and Schedule.
Maximize conversion value
- Aggressive bid adjustments: None.
- Partial Negative Bid Adjustment: None.
- Fully Negative Bid Adjustment (Exclusion): Device, Location, Audience, and Schedule.
maximize conversions
- Aggressive bid adjustments: Devices, locations, audiences, and schedules will allow for higher target CPA goals.
- Partial negative bid adjustments: Devices, locations, audiences, and schedules will allow for lower target CPA targets.
- Fully Negative Bid Adjustment (Exclusion): Device, Location, Audience, and Schedule.
When does manual vs. automation make sense
Budget is the biggest determinant of manual versus automated bid adjustments/bid strategies.
It is critical that automated systems have enough data to drive machine learning.
If your budget is constrained, you will need to manually force budget spending.
If you’re using the manual approach, it’s best to keep your bids conservative and make aggressive bid adjustments.
For example, if the auction price ranges from $5 to $17, bid close to the bottom range and use a 50% to 75% bid adjustment.
Scripted bid adjustments may make sense if you have a larger account and/or you need to make real-time adjustments.
If your industry budget is reasonable, full automation (i.e. using a bid strategy) might make sense.
The goal is to get here and use adjustment categories as exclusions only.
Questions about PPC?by submitting this form Or tweet @navahf with the hashtag #AskPPC. See you next month!
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Featured image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Magazine
