Search Ads 360 bid strategies and campaign-level membership

Beginning April 1, 2020, any new portfolio bid strategies that you create must be applied at the campaign level. This is known as campaign-level bid strategy membership. Previously, Search Ads 360 also allowed you to apply portfolio bid strategies to ad groups, keywords, and product groups (in this article, we refer to these items as lower-level entities).

Beginning April 1, 2020, any Search Ads 360 advertiser that previously only used campaign-level membership will no longer be able to apply lower-level memberships to bid strategies.

Beginning May 1, 2020, all existing portfolio bid strategies will be automatically updated (migrated) to use campaign-level membership, where feasible. The migration is targeted to be complete by the end of April 2020. 

Campaign-level bid strategy membership provides the best performance, compatibility with all automated bidding features (including auction-time bidding), and streamlined reporting. 

Complete these steps before May 1, 2020

We recommend that you take the following steps before the automatic migration occurs to ensure that your campaigns and bid strategy portfolios are configured to meet your needs.

1. Pause or remove rules that change bid strategy inheritance for lower-level entities.

2. Identify campaigns that have lower-level entities that are not inheriting a bid strategy from its parent.

3. Update lower-level entities to inherit the bid strategy setting from their parent.

4. Apply a bid strategy to campaigns that align best with the campaign’s goal.

5. Monitor performance.

Pause or remove any rules that change bid strategy inheritance

If you’ve created automated rules that change the bid strategy of lower-level entities, you should pause or remove those rules.

1. Navigate to an advertiser.

   Steps for navigating to an advertiser

   1. Click the navigation bar to display navigation options.

   2. In the "Agency" list, click on the agency that contains the advertiser. You can search for an agency by name or scroll through the list.

   3. In the "Advertiser" list, click on the advertiser.

   4. Click Apply or press the Enter key.

   Search Ads 360 displays the advertiser page, which contains data for all of the advertiser’s engine accounts.

2. In the left navigation panel, click Rules.

3. Select any rules that change the bid strategy assignment of lower-level entities.

4. Click Edit, and then click Pause or Remove. (Alternatively, you can edit the rule so it doesn’t change bid strategy inheritance).

For more info, see Pause, resume, or remove automated rules.

Identify campaigns that have lower-level entities that are not inheriting a bid strategy from their parent

You should verify that each campaign’s lower-level entities are inheriting the bid strategy settings from their parent.

To see the bid strategy membership for campaigns, ad groups, keywords, or product groups, add the “Bid strategy” column to a report. The inherit icon  indicates that the entity inherits the bid strategy from its parent (for example, the icon will appear for a keyword if its bid strategy membership has been inherited from its ad group).
 

If a lower-level entity is applied to a bid strategy that is different than its parent’s bid strategy or is set to manual bidding, the lower-level entity will automatically inherit its parent’s bid strategy when the migration is complete.

Update lower-level entities to inherit bid strategy from their parent

You should edit lower-level entities (ad groups, keywords, and product groups) to inherit the bid strategy from its parent. 

1. Navigate to an advertiser.

   Steps for navigating to an advertiser

   1. Click the navigation bar to display navigation options.

   2. In the "Agency" list, click on the agency that contains the advertiser. You can search for an agency by name or scroll through the list.

   3. In the "Advertiser" list, click on the advertiser.

   4. Click Apply or press the Enter key.

   Search Ads 360 displays the advertiser page, which contains data for all of the advertiser’s engine accounts.

2. Begin at the campaign’s lowest level (either the keyword or product group level depending on the type of campaign) by doing one of the following:

   • Click Keywords.

   • Click Targets, and then click Product groups.

3. Add the “Bid strategy” column to the report.

4. Select one or more entities to edit.

5. Click Edit, and then click Change bid strategy.

6. Under “New bid strategy”, click Inherit from parent.

7. Repeat these steps for relevant ad groups (in step 2, click Ad groups).

 You can also use a bulksheet to apply a bid strategy to multiple lower-level entities. Learn more about how to apply a Search Ads 360 bid strategy using a bulksheet.

Apply a bid strategy to campaigns

Next, you should ensure your bid strategies are properly applied to your campaigns according to the campaign’s goals:

1. Navigate to an advertiser.

   Steps for navigating to an advertiser

   1. Click the navigation bar to display navigation options.

   2. In the "Agency" list, click on the agency that contains the advertiser. You can search for an agency by name or scroll through the list.

   3. In the "Advertiser" list, click on the advertiser.

   4. Click Apply or press the Enter key.

   Search Ads 360 displays the advertiser page, which contains data for all of the advertiser’s engine accounts.

2. Click Campaigns.

3. Add the “Bid strategy” column to the report.

4. Select one or more campaigns.

5. Click Edit, and then click Change bid strategy.

6. Under “New bid strategy”, select a bid strategy that aligns best to the campaign’s goal.

Monitor performance

Monitor the impact of the above changes and adjust bid strategy goals, where applicable.