At the beginning of each advertising campaign at Google Ads is the selection of suitable keyword bidding strategies. This is a step that plays a significant role in determining how successful your campaign will be. The choice depends heavily on individual characteristics, your industry and your campaign goals. In order to make it easier for you to get started, we explain in the following the 11 most important bid strategies for Google Ads.
Manual bidding strategies
Manual bidding strategies are suitable for marketers, which retain full control over the level of their keyword bids want. By manually submitting your bid, you decide how your ad budget is allocated. At the same time, you have to invest significantly more time to evaluate and optimize the performance of the keywords.
The following manual bidding strategies are available on Google:
- Cost-per-click (CPC)
- Cost-per-view (CPV)
- Cost-per-mille (CPM)
- Viewable Cost-per-Mille (vCPM)
Cost-per-click (CPC)
With the manual CPC it is a question of a Google Ads bidding strategy for advertising and shopping campaigns, which is available on both the Google Search Network and the Google Display Network. The maximum CPC bids are set manually for each keyword and only change when adjustments are made manually. The advantage of this bidding strategy is that it is Exactly adapted to your wishes can be. This is especially important for Users with a narrow budget and small keyword frames advantageous. However, with many keywords or a large campaign, manual adjustment quickly becomes tedious.
Cost-per-view (CPV)
As a counterpart to CPC, manual CPV strategies are used for video ads. In this case, an ad is counted as seen when the end user more than 30 seconds of a video preview or click on the video to watch it in full.
Cost-per-mille (CPM)
As an alternative to the CPV strategy, Google offers the option of Bids directly for video insertions instead of paying for the cost per view. The disadvantage here is that it is difficult to see where the ad was placed or whether the end user even noticed it.
Viewable Cost-per-Mille (vCPM)
Google's solution to the CPM problem is Viewable CPM, in which advertisers bid only on impressions that actually appear in viewable positions. An ad is defined as viewable if it appears on the user's screen for at least one second or plays continuously for at least two seconds. The advantage of vCPM over CPM is that the Display ads actually get seen and make a brand better known. This strategy is rather unsuitable for generating clicks and traffic.
Automated bidding strategies
Automated Google Ads bidding strategies have been developed to Maximize optimization of keyword bids with respect to specific campaign goals. Bidding using automatic bidding strategies can be used for a specific ad group, a specific campaign, or for all campaigns in a specific Google Ads account.
These automated Google Ads bidding strategies are available:
- Maximize clicks
- Target percentage of possible impressions
Maximize clicks
If you choose the Google Ads bidding strategy known as auto-optimized CPC, your keyword bids will be automated in such a way that you get as many clicks as possible within your advertising budget. A set limit on CPC bid amounts ensures that you don't pay more than you want for individual clicks.
Target percentage of possible impressions
Known as "target impressions share", the Google Ads bidding strategy is an automatic bid configuration that attempts to increase the frequency with which your search ads appear in the area you select. The ad can be displayed anywhere on the search results page, among the first three to four paid results or on the top position of the search engine results pages. Furthermore, you can select how often your ads should appear for the targeted keyword. You can also set a maximum CPC bid limit to avoid paying too much for individual clicks.
Intelligent bidding strategies
Google Ads bidding strategies, known as smart bidding strategies, use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning to detect complex structures and connections and optimize keyword bids to the maximum at the time of the keyword auction. The use of artificial neural networks adjusts keyword bid amounts during the auction and selects ad placements that are most likely to lead to conversions.
Most smart bidding strategies focus on tracking conversions, such as:
- Target CPA
- Maximize conversions
- ROAS target
- Maximize conversions value
- Extended CPC
Target CPA
In a target CPA bidding strategy, advertisers set a target cost per auction. Google Ads Automatically optimizes keyword bidding strategy through supervised learning and unsupervised learning to achieve as many conversions as possible at or below the target CPA.
Maximize conversions
An intelligent bidding strategy, set to maximize conversions, uses machine learning to optimize keyword bidding and achieve the highest possible total number of conversions while using the daily budget.
Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
When you set your Google Ads bidding strategy to the ROAS goal, you are prompted to set the target for your ad campaign. The machine learning algorithm optimizes your bids to achieve the highest possible conversion value while targeting your ROAS goal.
Maximize conversions value
When you set conversion tracking for your Google Ads account, you need to assign relative values to each conversion event. A purchase could be assigned a high relative value, while capturing an email address would receive a lower conversion value. When you choose this bidding strategy Google Ads, optimize your keyword bidding strategy to generate the highest total value of conversions while spending your ad budget.
Extended CPC
Extended CPC is an extension of manual CPC bidding. You as an advertiser can still manually set budgets for keyword bids. Google Ads However, automatically controls bid adjustments to drive more conversions.
Conclusion
Google Ads bidding strategies allow you to optimize your ad spend to get the results that are most relevant to your campaign goals. We hope this post helps you choose the perfect bidding strategy to make the most of your daily budget.