Budget is constraining a Search Ads 360 bid strategy's performance

This message indicates that some campaigns in the Search Ads 360 bid strategy's portfolio don’t have enough budget to show your ads throughout an entire day. As a result, the portfolio will likely miss out on gaining additional conversions for a specified target.

A budget constraint is indicated by the percentage shown in the “Search lost IS (budget)” column. “Lost impression share to budget” is the percentage of time ads aren't shown due to insufficient budget.

With enough budget, a bid strategy may be able to drive more conversions at the same return on investment because the bid strategy will shift spend to high-performing campaigns that have limited impression share due to the daily budget.

If the budget is insufficient, it limits impressions and the bid strategy algorithm can't make necessary tradeoffs to spend more on higher-performing campaigns. The algorithm performs better when it has the freedom to make tradeoffs in the portfolio.

If your top-level objective is to maximize your ROI (for example, maximize conversions for a $50 CPA), the best approach is to increase campaign daily budgets until they no longer negatively impact impression share. Your daily budget increases are enough when 0% is displayed in the “Search lost IS (budget)” column.

Using the bid strategy reporting table, you can allow the bid strategy to gradually increase the budgets of specific campaigns over a couple of weeks. For example, you might spread an additional $1000 across specific campaign budgets. The additional budget allows your bid strategy to optimize more freely, thus improving performance.

Use budget to control spend in a Search Ads 360 bid strategy

Campaign budgets can be used to help prevent overspend in cases when changing strategies or adjusting conversion reporting. For example, temporarily lowering the budget to 1.2-1.3 times the current average daily spend is recommended as a "safety net" so you can mitigate large spend increases until fully transitioned to the new strategy or conversion tracking.

Budgets should be set to no more than the average daily amount the customer is comfortable spending regardless of actual CPA or ROAS. Note that spend can be up to 2 times the daily budget amount.

How to fix the issue

1. Sign in to your Search Ads 360 experience.
2. Navigate to a sub-manager account.
3. On the left navigation panel, click the Bidding & planning drop-down.
4. Select Bid Strategies.
5. Click the bid strategy target simulator icon for a bid strategy with a “Limited budget” status.
6. Select a target that matches your performance needs and budget.
   • If you want to add additional budget, navigate to the “Campaigns” reporting table and use the campaign level budget simulator to increase budget at a campaign level.
7. Click Apply to let the Search Ads 360 bid strategy apply the selected target.

You can use the report page to monitor the impact of the changes.

Manually increase budget at a campaign level

1. Sign in to your Search Ads 360 experience.
2. Navigate to a client account.
3. In the "Campaigns" reporting table, click on a campaign.
4. At the top of the screen, hover over “Budget” and click the pencil icon that appears.
5. Enter the new budget amount.
   See the campaign settings for more information about how to manually change the budget for each client:
   • Google Ads campaign settings
   • Microsoft Advertising campaign settings
   • Yahoo! JAPAN Ads campaign settings
6. You can also use the campaign level budget simulator to select a target that matches your performance needs and budget.
7. Repeat the preceding steps for each of the recommended campaigns. Adjust the budget only if it aligns with your business goals.