Last Updated on August 29, 2024

Choosing the right bidding strategy is essential for launching and running a successful campaign. The strategy you choose will be based on your goals as well as the data you have already collected.

Bidding strategies are based on increasing Conversions, Clicks, Impressions, or Views. The MC will decide what bid strategy to implement, but the fulfillment team should be knowledgable enough to send the MC strategic suggestions for changing bid strategies.

Conversion Based Bid Strategies

When focused on conversions, we generally implement a smart bidding strategy. It is essential that conversion tracking is fully set up if you are using a conversion based bid strategy.

  1. Target cost per acquisition (CPA) – this strategy is perfect if your ads have been running for a while and have plenty of conversion data and you have a certain amount per conversion you don’t want to be going over. It can also be used to try and reduce the average cost per conversion, just be sure to pay attention to how Google predicts this strategy will affect the campaign – it will often alert you if it doesn’t think your target CPA is achievable.
  2. Target return on ad spend (ROAS) – this strategy is perfect if your ads have been running for a while with plenty of conversion data, and if you have conversion values set up correctly.
  3. Maximize Conversions – this strategy is great for a brand new campaign with no data, or if you’re just wanting to focus on getting the most conversions possible. We often switch from max conversions to target CPA once we have a baseline for CPA.
  4. Maximize Conversion Value – this strategy is great for brand new campaigns and if your account has conversion values properly set up. It also works great if certain conversions are worth more than others.
  5. Enhanced cost per click (ECPC) – This is a manual bidding strategy where google will increase the bid if it’s algorithm determines a conversion is likely.

Click Based Bid Strategies

Before you can begin really optimizing an account, you need enough data to analyze, a click based bid strategy can be useful for collecting data fast.

  1. Maximize Clicks – Google will optimize bids for the most clicks based on your budget
  2. Manual CPC Bidding – This is a manual bid strategy where you set the max cost per click. It doesn’t allow room for Google to optimize your bids during auction but ensures you won’t go above the max cpc set.

Impression Based Bid Strategies

Impression based bid strategies are high funnel strategies focused on getting your ads seen as much as possible, we don’t generally use these strategies because we usually are focused lower in the sales funnel.

  1. Target Impression Share – “automatically sets bids with the goal of showing your ad on the absolute top of the page, on the top of the page, or anywhere on the page of Google search results.”
  2. CPM – “With this bid strategy, you’ll pay based on the number of impressions (times your ads are shown) that you receive on YouTube or the Google Display Network.”
  3. tCPM – “A bidding strategy where you set an average for how much you’re willing to pay for every thousand impressions. It optimizes bids to maximize your campaign’s unique reach. With tCPM, you can keep your campaign’s average CPM lower or equal to the target you set (although the cost of impressions may vary).”
  4. vCPM – “This is a manual bidding strategy you can use if your ads are designed to increase awareness, but not necessarily generate clicks or traffic. It lets you set the highest amount you want to pay for each 1,000 viewable ad impressions on the Google Display Network.”

Views Based Bid Strategies

This is for video only.

  1. CPV – “With CPV bidding, you’ll pay for video views and other video interactions, such as clicks on the calls-to-action (CTA) overlay, cards, and companion banners. You just enter the highest price you want to pay for a view while setting up your TrueView video campaign.”