Determine a minimum and maximum bid

While your Search Ads 360 bid strategy goal may be important for your site, it probably isn't the only goal you have. For example, in addition to increasing the number of car rental conversions, you may want to maintain a basic level of traffic to your site for other purposes. Or you may need to keep all CPCs below a certain amount. So you'll want to make sure that bids don't fall too low or you may see a reduction in traffic, and you don't want the bid strategy to bid above your maximum CPC amount.

To make sure that a bid strategy respects other goals you may have for your site, you'll need to set a minimum and maximum bid for the bid strategy. Note that you may never see bids reaching the minimum or maximum that you set, but setting this range provides some minimal constraints for the bid strategy to operate within. 

Search Ads 360 provides a couple of options for determining a minimum and maximum bid:

• Search Ads 360 bid strategy opportunities:  For campaigns that aren't already managed by a bid strategy, Search Ads 360 analyzes recent campaign performance towards a selected goal and will recommend a minimum and maximum bid if you create a bid strategy using the recommendation.

• Filtered keyword report: You can use a keyword report to see the minimum and maximum bids in the recent past. The you can apply a multiplier to find the ideal range as a starting point.

Use a filtered keyword report to determine the minimum and maximum bid

1. View the campaign report from the previous step.
2. If you haven't already, filter the reporting table so that it contains only the Floodlight activities that are in your goal:
   1. Click the Filter button that appears above the performance summary graph.
   2. From the Attribute or metric list, select Floodlight activity.
   3. Enter all or part of the a Floodlight activity's name.
   4. Click Apply.
3. Click the Keywords tab.
4. Add the Avg CPC column to the table:
   1. Click the Columns button that appears above the performance summary graph.
   2. Type Avg CPC in the search box.
   3. Click next to the column name in the Available columns list.
   4. Click Apply.
5. Remove any keywords that weren't clicked:
   1. Click the Filter button that appears above the performance summary graph.
   2. From the Attribute or metric list, select Avg CPC.
   3. Select Greater than, and enter 0 (zero).
   4. Click Apply.

6. Now click the Avg CPC column heading to sort the table by average CPC.

   The bid strategy's minimum bid should be just below the lowest average CPC. For example, if the lowest average CPC is .08, set .04 as the bid strategy's minimum bid.

   The bid strategy's maximum bid should be about twice the highest average CPC. For example, if the highest average CPC is 5.00, set 10.00 as the bid strategy's maximum bid.

Remember that you may never see bids reaching the minimum or maximum that you set, but setting a wide range gives the bid strategy plenty of latitude to reach your goal for the portfolio as a whole.