Automated ads bidding is one of the best ways to uplift your Google Ads performance goals. It leverages the power of Google’s AI to revolutionize bid management and drive better results for your campaigns.
You can use a variety of automated bidding strategies to increase impressions, clicks and conversion rates. By taking the guesswork out of bid adjustments and allowing for auction time bidding, you can create a standard or portfolio bid strategy for multiple ad campaigns.
In this article, you will learn about the significant core advantages of Google Ads automated bidding.
Let’s begin!
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What Is Google Ads Automated Bidding?
Unlike manual bidding, where you need to set your own maximum cost per click (CPC) for your ads, Google Ads automated bidding allows you to set bids for your ads automatically that best achieve each campaign goal.
The goal is to maximize the return on investment (ROI) for your advertising budget.
In simpler terms, it’s like having a smart assistant who automatically decides how much to bid on your ads to get you the best results.
When you run an ad on Google, you compete with other advertisers to show your ad to people searching for relevant keywords or browsing websites related to your business. A bid is the amount you’re willing to pay for each click on your ad.
Traditionally, advertisers had to set these bids manually, which could be time-consuming and require constant monitoring. With Automated Bidding, Google uses advanced algorithms and data analysis to adjust your bids automatically.
7 Types of Automated Bid Strategies
There are currently seven types of automated bid strategies available in Google Ads.
Let’s go through each of them in a little more detail, before we move on to the core benefits of automated bidding.
Maximize Clicks
The Maximize Clicks strategy aims to generate the highest possible click volume within your budget. Google Ads automatically sets bids to increase the chances of getting more clicks on your ads.
The Maximize Clicks bidding strategy is suitable when your primary goal is to drive traffic to your website or increase brand exposure. It is beneficial if you have a limited budget but want to maximize the number of clicks your ads receive.
Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
This powerful automated bidding strategy takes the guesswork out of optimizing your ad bids.
With Target CPA, you can auto-set bids to help your campaigns maximize conversions at the target CPA you set. Please note that some conversions may cost more or less than your target.
The goal is to find the sweet spot where you get the most conversions at a cost that aligns with your target CPA.
Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
With the Target ROAS strategy, you define a target return on ad spend, and Google Ads optimizes your bids to maximize revenue based on your set ROAS goal. It uses advanced machine learning algorithms to adjust bids for different auction opportunities.
Instead of focusing on a specific cost per conversion, Target ROAS allows you to set a target return on ad spend.
ROAS is calculated by dividing the revenue generated from your ads by the amount spent on those ads. So, for example, to achieve a 400% ROAS, you would set your target ROAS as 4.0.
Target Impression Share
Target impression share automatically sets your bids to increase your ads’ chances of appearing in the search page area you select.
This strategy streamlines the bidding process. It allows Google Ads to dynamically adjust your bids to maintain the desired impression share, helping you achieve your visibility objectives more efficiently.
Maximize Conversions
This strategy focuses on driving the maximum number of conversions within your budget. Google Ads automatically sets bids to get your ads in front of the right audience, aiming to generate as many conversions as possible.
This is the best bidding strategy to use when you have limited time or resources to optimize your bids for each keyword or ad group manually. By leveraging Maximize Conversions, you can save time and let Google Ads optimize your bids to drive more valuable conversions.
Enhanced CPC
Enhanced CPC (ECPC) is a bidding strategy that combines manual CPC bidding with automated bidding. It uses your manual CPC bids as a starting point, but it can adjust them automatically to improve your results.
ECPC is a good choice for businesses that want to get more conversions while staying in control of their keyword bids. It is also a good option for businesses that are new to automated bidding and want to test the waters before committing to a more complex strategy.
Maximize Conversion Value
Maximum Conversion Value bidding is an advanced automated bidding strategy offered by Google Ads that goes beyond simply increasing conversion volume:
With this strategy, the focus shifts to maximizing the total value generated from your conversions, accounting for factors such as purchase value, order size, or customer lifetime value.
It’s essential to make sure you have accurate conversion tracking and sufficient historical data to enable the system to make informed bidding decisions.
Adopting Maximize Conversion Value empowers Google Ads to optimize your bids intelligently and bring more conversion value to your business.
Use this chart depicting the types of automated and smart bidding strategies to determine the best bidding strategy for your campaign goal:
7 Core Benefits of Google Ads Automated Bidding
Google Ads automated bidding can help businesses of all sizes save time, get more conversions and improve their return on ad spend.
Let’s take a look at the top seven core benefits of using automated bidding in Google Ads:
1) Lets You Optimize Campaigns Based on Your Goals
Automated bidding in Google Ads allows you to align your campaign objectives with specific bidding strategies, such as maximizing conversions or achieving a target return on ad spend (ROAS). It enables you to optimize your campaigns toward your desired goals and outcomes.
Based on the goals and data analysis, Google’s automated bidding system adjusts bids in real-time. It factors in variables like ad quality, keyword relevance, competition, and user intent to determine the optimal bid for each auction.
As the system gathers more data and learns from campaign performance, it refines the bidding strategy further. It identifies opportunities for improvement, identifies underperforming keywords or placements, and adjusts bids accordingly to optimize performance and achieve the desired goals.
2) Reduces Guesswork
Automated bidding reduces the risk of error associated with manual bidding. It eliminates the possibility of overlooking bid adjustments, incorrect calculations or missed opportunities due to human oversight.
With automated bidding, you rely on advanced algorithms and machine learning to make data-driven bidding decisions. This reduces the need for manual guesswork and minimizes human error, as the system accounts for various factors and historical performance data to optimize bids effectively.
Additionally, automated bidding continuously learns and adapts based on real-time campaign performance, refining its bidding strategy over time. This dynamic and adaptive approach ensures that bidding decisions are based on up-to-date information, reducing reliance on guesswork and increasing the precision and effectiveness of bid optimizations.
In this way, automated bidding brings a scientific and data-driven approach to campaign management, minimizing uncertainty and maximizing the potential for achieving campaign goals.
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3) Increases Efficiency
Automated bidding streamlines the bidding process by automatically adjusting bids in real time. It saves you the effort of manually monitoring and adjusting bids for individual keywords or ad groups.
By leveraging automation, you can free up time and resources to focus on other essential aspects of your marketing campaigns.
Automated bidding can efficiently manage bids across large campaigns or multiple campaigns simultaneously. It eliminates the need for manual adjustments and optimizes bids based on each auction’s specific conditions, ensuring efficient allocation of resources.
By automating bid management, marketers can free up time and resources to focus on other important tasks, such as strategy development, creative optimization, and campaign analysis. This allows them to make more impactful contributions to overall campaign success.
4) Leverages Query Level Performance Modeling
Another core benefit of Google Ads’ automated bidding is that it uses query-level performance modeling, which means it analyzes the historical performance of search queries to optimize bids more precisely. This enables you to capture valuable traffic and target specific keywords more likely to drive conversions or meet your campaign goals.
Based on the performance data of specific search queries, automated bidding adjusts bids to optimize for better performance. It identifies which queries are more likely to drive valuable actions, such as conversions or engagement, and allocates bids accordingly.
5) Saves Time
Automating the bidding process saves time that would otherwise be spent on manual bid adjustments. This allows the system to make bid optimizations based on real-time data and performance signals, reducing the need for constant monitoring and adjustments on your part.
You can trust the automated system to handle these tasks efficiently rather than dedicating significant time and resources to monitoring and adjusting bids.
This allows you to focus on strategic decision-making, such as refining your ad copy, exploring new targeting options, or analyzing campaign performance from a broader perspective.
6) Offers Better Control Over Budget
With automated bidding, you have more control over your budget allocation. You can set maximum limits or constraints to ensure your search campaigns stay within budget while optimizing bids for optimal performance. This helps you maximize your advertising budget and achieve your desired results efficiently.
It offers insights into spending patterns, ad performance, and pacing to ensure that your budget is utilized effectively over time. You can track your budget utilization and adjust bid strategies as needed to stay within your allocated budget while maximizing results.
Automated bidding minimizes the risk of overspending or wasting your budget by optimizing bids based on performance signals and predefined goals.
By dynamically adjusting bids and targeting high-value opportunities, it reduces the chances of inefficient spending. It ensures that your budget is allocated to the most impactful areas, improving your overall return on investment.
7) Produces Quick Results
Automated bidding can deliver quick results by leveraging real-time data and machine learning algorithms. It allows for faster bid adjustments and optimizations compared to manual bidding, enabling you to see the impact of bid changes on your campaign performance more rapidly.
With automated bidding, campaigns can quickly adapt to changes in the market, target audience behavior, and competitive landscape, resulting in faster optimizations and improved performance.
By harnessing the power of machine learning, automated bidding continuously learns from campaign data, identifies patterns, and fine-tunes bidding strategies to deliver quick and efficient results.
It empowers advertisers to focus on strategic decision-making rather than manual bid management, allowing them to save time and drive faster growth for their business.
How Can I Set Up Automatic Bidding?
To set up an automatic bidding strategy:
- Sign in to your Google Ads account.
- Click on Tools and Settings in the top navigation menu.
- Click on Shared Library.
- Click on Bid Strategies.
From here:
- Click on Create new bid strategy.
- Select the automated bidding strategy that you want to use.
- Enter the settings for your bidding strategy.
- Then click on Create.
That’s it!
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Bid Strategy Report for Automated Bidding Strategies
The Google Ads automated bid strategy report provides insights and data on the performance of your campaigns using automated bidding strategies:
It contains customized metrics that are specifically relevant to each bid strategy type. It offers insights into crucial data such as bid strategy status, average target, conversion delay, and top signals.
These reports are accessible at the portfolio level for bid strategies implemented across multiple campaigns and at the individual campaign level through the standard bid strategy report.
Last Word on Core Benefits of Google Ads Automated Bidding
By using advanced algorithms and machine learning, automated bidding simplifies the bidding process for advertisers. It allows them to make smarter decisions based on data and reach their goals more efficiently.
These bidding strategies allow you to concentrate on strategic aspects of their campaigns while Google Ads takes care of bid optimizations. This leads to better overall campaign performance and ensures that advertising budgets are utilized effectively.
Ultimately, automated bidding in Google Ads enables advertisers to achieve their desired outcomes, generate impactful results, and stay competitive in the dynamic world of digital advertising.
If you are not sure of these automated bidding types is right for you, I recommend speaking with a Google Ads expert — like Single Grain! We can help you assess your needs and recommend the best strategy for your business.
If you’re ready to level up your ad campaigns, Single Grain’s Google Ads experts (and Google Premier Partner) can help!👇
Google Ads Automated Bidding FAQs
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Can I Still Have Control Over My Budget With Automated Bidding?
Yes, you can set maximum limits or constraints on your budget with automated bidding. This allows you to maintain control over your spending while still benefiting from the automated bidding system’s bid optimizations.
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Do I Need a Certain Amount of Data for Automated Bidding to Be Effective?
Yes, having sufficient data is essential for automated bidding to be effective. The system relies on historical performance data to make informed bidding decisions. The more data available, the better the system can optimize bids for improved campaign performance.
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Should I Use Automated Bidding for All My Campaigns?
Automated bidding may not be suitable for all campaigns, depending on factors such as campaign goals, available data, and specific requirements. Testing and evaluating automated bidding strategy performance against your campaign objectives is recommended to determine the best approach.
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Can I Switch Between Manual and Automated Bidding Strategies?
Yes, you can switch between manual and automated bidding strategies based on your preferences and campaign needs.
Google Ads allows you to switch bidding strategies at any time, giving you flexibility in managing your campaigns.
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Is Automated Bidding Guaranteed to Improve Campaign Performance?
While automated bidding can significantly improve campaign performance, monitoring and optimizing your campaigns regularly is vital to ensure they align with your goals.
Automated bidding is a powerful tool, but it should be used in conjunction with ongoing campaign management and optimization efforts.
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Are There Any Additional Costs Associated With Using Automated Bidding?
There are no additional costs specific to using Automated Bidding.
The bidding process itself remains within the standard cost structure of Google Ads, where you pay for clicks or conversions based on your chosen bidding strategy.
However, monitoring your campaign budgets and adjusting them as needed is essential to ensure optimal utilization of your advertising budget.
