Notification

Welcome to the help center for Search Ads 360, a platform for managing search marketing campaigns.  While the help center is available to the public, access to the Search Ads 360 product is available only to subscribing customers who are signed in. To subscribe or find out more, contact our sales team.

Create a specific type of bid strategy

Define targets

Select an attribution model

In the Target section of the Search Ads 360 bid strategy editor:

  1. Select an attribution model.

    Choose the default last-click attribution model or select a different attribution model.

  2. Optional. If you don't want the bid strategy to consider conversions from other devices such as mobile phones when setting or recommending bid adjustments, clear the Cross-environment conversions check box. 
    Recommendation: Leave the check box selected.
    Cross-environment conversions are automatically included to attribute credit for the various types customer interactions that lead to conversions.

Add targets

In the Target section of the Search Ads 360 bid strategy editor, do the following to add each target you want in the bid strategy:

  1. Click + Add another target.

  2. In the Target type list, select a CPA target, ERS target, or ROAS target. Then enter a target amount or percent.

  3. Select Floodlight or Google Analytics conversions to optimize.

When you're finished adding targets, click Next.

CPA target

Cost per action (CPA) is calculated as follows:

  • CPA = spend ÷ (number of actions)

If you specify a CPA target, Search Ads 360 will raise or lower bids to maximize the specified conversions while achieving a CPA that’s as close as possible to the target CPA. That is, over a time period, Search Ads 360 will strive to achieve an average cost per action for the selected group of conversions that meets the target CPA while keeping the portfolio as a whole profitable. In some cases, this can result in a CPA for an individual keyword that is more than the target CPA, making that keyword unprofitable.

Available conversions for a CPA target

You can select from the following types of conversions for each CPA target:

  • Floodlight: Maximizes the number of revenue and non-revenue conversions that are tracked by Floodlight activities on your site, such as signing up for a newsletter or the number of shopping cart completions.
  • Google Analytics: Maximizes the number of Google Analytics goal completions and ecommerce transactions on your site.

Note that a CPA target maximizes the number of transactions, not the amount of revenue or the quantity of items sold. If you want to maximize the amount of revenue, create an ERS or ROAS target.

Revenue targets

ERS target

Effective revenue share is a percentage based on the following calculation:

  • ERS = (spend ÷ revenue) × 100

To reach the ERS target percentage, Search Ads 360 raises or lowers the bid to maximize conversions while achieving the target ERS. The lower the ERS, the larger your return on your advertising dollars. In some cases, when Search Ads 360 places a higher bid (which translates to a higher ERS) on an individual keyword, the bid is out of the range of the target ERS and is unprofitable even though the overall bid strategy is profitable.

ROAS target

Return on advertising spend (ROAS) is a percentage based on the following calculation:

  • ROAS = (revenue ÷ spend) × 100

To reach the ROAS target percentage, Search Ads 360 raises or lowers the bid to maximize the specified conversions while achieving the target ROAS. The higher the ROAS, the larger your return on your advertising dollars. In some cases, when Search Ads 360 places a higher bid (which translates to a lower ROAS) on an individual keyword, the bid is out of the range of the target ROAS and is unprofitable even though the overall bid strategy is profitable.

Conversions for revenue targets

A revenue bid strategy can maximize revenue that's recorded by the following types of conversions:

  • Floodlight: Maximizes revenue from transaction activities or action activities that report revenue values.
  • Google Analytics: Maximizes revenue from ecommerce transactions and goals that define a monetary value.

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?

Need more help?

Try these next steps:

Search
Clear search
Close search
Google apps
Main menu
17122207941934317724
true
Search Help Center
true
true
true
true
true
263
false
false