Bid adjustments increase or decrease bids depending on the device a customer searches from, membership in a remarketing list, or location. Search engines vary in the scenarios and bid adjustments they support.
You can set up a Conversions, Revenue, or Advanced targeting Smart Bidding strategy to automatically optimize the bid adjustments that are available in some engine types. If you prefer a more hands-on approach, a bid strategy can recommend a bid adjustment, and you can periodically view and apply the recommendation when it suits your needs.
Some search engines such as Google Ads can increase or decrease the bid you specify for specific types of devices, such as mobile, or specific types of targets, such as remarketing targets.
Smart Bidding strategies can find the optimal bid adjustment for your conversions or revenue goals because they use the same historical performance data to set the base bid and to adjust the bids for specific types of devices and targets. You can even set up a bid strategy that focuses exclusively on optimizing bid adjustments. With this type of Search Ads 360 bid strategy you manually set bids, and the bid strategy automatically sets bid adjustments.
A Search Ads 360 bid strategy can only set or recommend bid adjustments for the campaigns, ad groups, and biddable items in its portfolio.
Bid strategy appears to change bid adjustments when paused
It may appear that a bid strategy continues to set or recommend bid adjustments after the bid strategy has been paused. What is actually happening is that a different, active bid strategy that is applied to the ad group or keyword is setting or recommending the bid adjustments.
You can add the Bid strategy column to the "Ad groups" and "Keywords" tabs to verify whether items are inheriting a bid strategy or are managed by a different bid strategy.
Bid adjustment options
When you create a bid strategy, the "Goal" page displays a list of all bid adjustments from supported search engines. The bid adjustments you select will be applied only in the engine types that support them, as described in the table below.
|
Option |
Applies to engine types |
Description |
|---|---|---|
|
Keywords and other biddable items |
Automatically adjusts bids for keywords and product groups. If you clear this checkbox:
|
|
|
Device bid adjustments |
Google Ads |
Automatically sets optimal bid adjustments for desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. If you don't select this checkbox, the bid strategy will still recommend bid adjustments for the devices, and you can apply them manually. Learn more about device bid adjustments. |
|
Remarketing target bid adjustments |
Google Ads Microsoft Advertising |
Automatically sets optimal bid adjustments for Google Ads remarketing targets and Microsoft Advertising remarketing targets. If you don't select this checkbox, the bid strategy will still recommend bid adjustments for any Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising remarketing targets you've set up, and you can apply the adjustments manually. Learn more about remarketing target bid adjustments in Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising. |
|
Location target bid adjustments |
Google Ads |
Automatically sets optimal bid adjustments for geo-location targets, proximity targets, and location extension targets. If you don't select this checkbox, the bid strategy will still recommend bid adjustments for any location targets you've set up, and you can apply the adjustments manually. Learn more about location target bid adjustments. |
Changing the settings
After you create a bid strategy, you can change most of the bid-adjustment settings. For example, if you start with a bid strategy that only recommends device bid adjustments, you can change the bid strategy later to automatically apply the bid adjustments. Likewise, if you start with a bid strategy that automatically sets bid adjustments, you can change the bid strategy so that it only recommends bid adjustments.
However, once you set up a bid strategy to automatically set bids (that is, automatically setting the base bid, not just setting adjustments such as device bid adjustments), you cannot go back to a bid strategy that focuses exclusively on optimizing bid adjustments.