New smart bidding strategy is added to the line of services with Google Ads, which aims at maximizing the conversion value and is now embedded in all types of Google Search campaigns. At first, they announced the Google Marketing Live (GML) back in Many 2019 to maximize the conversion value and to optimize the bids for the highest amount within the budget.
With conversion maximization, it will also try to exhaust your budget. So, one has to do the custom setting of it accordingly. However, it is also noted that if a campaign is spending below the average budget, Google will show options to lower the set budget too based on the actual spend. Google says that the maximum conversion value will use the data from historical campaigns and the contextual signals of web searchers to determine the optimal bid value at the auction.
In order to test or use maximize conversion value tool, you have to use some transaction-specific values or to set the conversion values for conversion types which you are optimizing for. You can access this under the ‘Tools’ by going to the ‘Conversion’ page. In fact, more rules for the conversion value are yet to be announced. Google had also teased the rules at the GML in order to provide advertisers with better flexibility in terms of assigning conversion action values. When this rolls out, further rules may be set based on certain characteristics like the audience, location, and device, etc.
Pros & Cons of Automated Bidding
In fact, automated bidding remains a hot topic of discussion in the SEO industry lately. Many articles and forum discussions are thriving at the web. Many of the posts are favoring this move, but you can also see many other posts which warn you against bidding automation.
In fact, when it comes to the reality of it, you cannot vote against or in favor of this, but can only say “it depends.”
We can see that there are various bidding options with automated bidding in Google Ads. Some of these may be ideal for you, whereas many others may be terrible if not handled properly. In this guide further, we are discussing different options available and what you have to watch for in terms of your needs for automation.
Manual bidding
Manual bidding is the simplest big option to get a grasp of Google Ads. The advertisers can set their bids by choosing the keywords manually, and the bid will stay there until the advertiser changes it. Even though Google warns against it, this is the be the approach to the beginners on PPC or those who make use of their spare time to manage AdWords account or using third-party SEO services, but it has drawbacks too.
Drawbacks of manual bidding
The major drawback for busy advertisers on choosing manual bidding is that it can take a lot of your precious time. In terms of accomplishing the manual tasks involved in it, this bidding model requires a fair time investment from your end to track the performance, judge the keywords, tracking to change the bids and readjusting them and to decide the needs for changes and accomplishing the changes. Adding to it, manual bidding most of the times could at the risk of being under-informed.
While the advertisers review their performance stats, they are provided with a few incompetent metrics about their campaigns. On the other hand, with automated bidding, Google can easily identify the data points to be considered for the accounts which the users even don’t know existed.
However, these downsides don’t actually mean that only automation is good, and manual bidding isn’t right. The only thing is that you have to make some further considerations while strategizing your bids. If you are planning to switch from manual bidding in order to save your precious time and leverage the benefit of the data points for analytics, here are some additional things to know about the automated bidding Google Ads offer now.
- Enhanced CPC
The Enhanced CPC model bidding is almost the same as to the manual bidding. However, it will let the algorithm of Google Ads to make some adjustments to the keyword bids, which are manually set. You can easily enable Enhanced CPC on checking the box beneath manual bidding option or by choosing the option of Enhanced CPC in the drop-down for bidding types.
By enabling Enhanced CPC, Google Ads may further automatically increase or decrease the bid against a keyword in individual auctions on the basis of is a likelihood of the possibility of a lead getting on to sales. The changeset for this was within 30% of up or down adjustment, but this cap had been removed lately, and now Google Ads can adjust it to any level.
The major positive outcome of enhanced CPC use is enhanced CRT (click-through rates) and better CVR (conversion rates). In fact, there is also an increase in the CPC (cost per click) as the algorithms may tend to raise the bids too often compared to lower it.
- Maximum conversions
The Maximum Conversions strategy for bidding is to increase conversion rates on spending your daily budget set. There are no additional settings to control it by the advertiser. So, the campaigns using the Maximize Conversions have a set daily budget, which is not a part of any shared budget as this approach will spend the entire daily budget for each campaign. In fact, if it’s put into a shared budget, then Maximize Conversions may tend to spend the entire daily budget for the shared group.
So, why should we care about automated bidding? As we have noted above, manual bidding is still available and open for all, but Google largely de-emphasized its use as its missing many advanced capabilities. With an increasing demand for smart bidding and strategies revolving around it, the users must understand how each of these is designed and how the metrics and settings are aligned. Smart bidding is an evolving concept, which may surely change ways for digital marketers who are trying to optimize their return on investment on Google Ads platform.
