Optimise Performance Max for the retail holidays

Effectively use Smart Bidding with Shopping and Performance Max campaigns

Next: Get the most out of Performance Max automation and creative

This illustration represents how effectively smart bidding is used with standard shopping and Performance Max campaigns.

Smart Bidding refers to bid strategies that use Google AI to optimise for conversions or conversion value in each and every auction. This is a feature known as 'auction-time bidding'. Target CPA, target ROAS, Maximise conversion and Maximise conversion value are all Smart Bidding strategies.

In this article, you’ll learn how to optimise your Smart Bidding strategies for the holidays.

Highlight your sales and promotions for Merchant Center products

You can update your data sources and use sales price annotations to highlight your business’ sales and promotions. You can also create promotion and price assets to showcase holiday deals in the Merchant Center. These local promotions can be used to advertise store-specific products. Additionally, you can also add member pricing to showcase discounts to your most loyal customers.

Learn more about Promotions best practices.

Capture holiday demand with budgets and ROAS targets

Follow the guidelines below to help capture holiday demand:

Guideline 1: Consider your budget

During key promotion days (Black Friday, Cyber Week), you’ll want to make sure that your budget allows you to reach the right customers. It’s recommended that you plan to maximise capturing holiday demand by:

Increasing your budget: Set a budget of three times what you want or expect to spend to ensure ample headroom across retail holidays.
Monitoring spend on an ongoing basis: Check your Google Ads account budgets regularly to confirm that you aren’t limiting campaign performance or spend during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Choosing the right bid strategy: It’s recommended that you use target ROAS to guide your spend, and consider lowering your ROAS target below what you normally use in order to maximise potential sales.

If you want to specify a budget:

Set your budget two times higher than target spend if your account has no historical data or benchmark previous year spend.
Use a Max Value strategy instead of target ROAS in order to maximise sales within your budget.

Note: Campaigns may spend up to two times your average daily budget if demand increases.

Guideline 2: Adjust ROAS targets for key promotion days

If you’d like to adjust your ROAS targets for key promotion days like Black Friday and Cyber Week, follow the steps below:

Make desired target adjustments a few days ahead of your key promotion day. Setting up early will get your campaign ready to capture additional conversion opportunities.
Set gradual target adjustments vs. significant ones. As an example, you could set your adjustments up in increments of 30% over time and wait 1–2 conversion cycles between changes.
Monitor and adjust your strategy based on performance through the holiday. Make sure that you review your reporting metrics and make changes as needed.

Guideline 3: Set a reasonable target for the holidays

As a general rule, your target ROAS should be set close to the current ROAS to start, and you can adjust as needed after performance reaches the initial target. In addition to shifting your target ROAS, you can also use historical performance as a starting point to set your goals and targets.

Example

If you want to increase sales in a competitive market with higher demand than your usual market, you could consider lowering your ROAS targets.

In addition to reviewing historical data, you can use the Google Ads Bid Simulator or Performance Planner to determine what bid amount is likely to deliver the performance you want.

Use seasonality adjustments for key promotion days

You can use seasonality adjustments when you expect a change in conversion rate that aligns with a sale or promotion. You can also use tools like seasonality adjustments for a short period, like a 3-day flash sale, expecting CVR to increase significantly.

Ramp up and ramp down time during the holiday

To optimise your Shopping campaigns, it’s recommended that you launch with a low ROAS target in order to encourage scaling. You can adjust to your desired target after the campaign scales. Avoid making budget/target changes during ramp up.

To optimise your Performance Max campaigns, it’s recommended that you start with a max conversion value strategy, then add a ROAS target based on what you achieve. You can also accelerate and steer machine learning by using audience signals and by increasing the number of Merchant Center offers in a campaign.

After the retail holiday is over, make sure that you:

Reassess ROAS targets to ensure that they’re aligned with post-holiday expectations
Remove any assets or Merchant Center-based promotions that are no longer relevant

Note: New Performance Max campaigns may go through a learning period when collecting data and learning from performance.

To analyse Performance Max success, allow your campaign to run for at least six weeks before evaluation and take the following actions:

Ramp up the campaign for 1–2 weeks after its start date
Factor in the conversion delay period (known as the conversion window)
Exclude the ramp-up period for your testing analysis

Apply data exclusions

The Data exclusions tool applies to clicks, and is used for website outages or issues like tagging problems. You can use this tool if you catch campaign issues within a week. It’s not recommended to use the data exclusions tool to fix issues that have existed for more than 14 days for Search and Display (60 days for Shopping) or to use the tool for long periods of time.

Learn more about how to Use data exclusions.

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