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.

Best practices for setting up Search Ads 360 Smart Bidding strategies

Apply recommendations

Search Ads 360 bid strategies
  1. View bid strategy opportunities.
  2. In the reporting table, select campaigns with similar recommended targets:
    1. To see the recommended targets, look in the Recommended CPA target, Recommended ROAS target, or Recommended ERS target column. 
    2. To sort the table by the recommended targets, click the 28 day average subheading.  
    3. Select the check boxes next to campaigns with similar recommended targets. 
      For example, if you selected a conversions goal, try selecting campaigns with a recommended CPA of anywhere between $50 and $40.

      DS displays the averages in a scorecard above the reporting table.

      If you select a range of targets that's too broad (for example, CPA ranging from $50 to $5), Search Ads 360 may not be confident enough that it can improve performance for all of the campaigns you selected. In this case, you'll see a message suggesting that you select a different group of campaigns.
  3. Click the Create bid strategy button that appears above the table.
  4. Give the bid strategy a name.
    Enter a name that helps you recognize the type of goal, engine account, and group of campaigns you're creating the bid strategy for. The name will appear in the list of all bid strategies that have been created in your advertiser. 
  5. To optimize bid adjustments, do the following:  
    1. Click Modify bid strategy and click Yes, I understand.
    2. On the first page of the bid strategy editor, optionally select any of the check boxes:

      You can make changes to other bid strategy settings, but it isn't recommended.

    3. Click Save bid strategy and skip the next step.
  6. Click Create recommended bid strategy.

Search Ads 360 creates a bid strategy with the recommended ROI target and the conversions you selected for the goal. Then Search Ads 360 applies the bid strategy to the selected campaigns.

If any ad groups and keywords in the campaigns were set to use "manual bidding" and ignore bid strategies, they'll be updated to inherit the bid strategy from the campaign.

Modifying recommended settings

Although it isn't recommended, you can change some settings before creating a recommended bid strategy (you can also change the same settings after you create the bid strategy). Note that the larger the change, the less likely you'll see the forecasted results. For example, if Search Ads 360 recommends a $10 CPA target and you change the target to $5, it's likely that Search Ads 360 will not be able to achieve the number of conversions it forecast for the $10 CPA.

In addition, you cannot make changes that fundamentally alter the bid strategy, such as changing a CPA target to a ROAS target. Such a change would require a completely different approach to calculating bids and reporting progress. 

To modify recommended settings:

  1. Start creating a recommended bid strategy as described above.
  2. After you give the bid strategy a name, click Modify bid strategy and click Yes, I understand.
    The bid strategy settings panel appears. The settings that can be changed depend on the type of goal you selected.
  3. To see which settings can be changed, click the Next and Previous buttons.
  4. When you're finished, click Save bid strategy.

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?

Need more help?

Try these next steps:

Search
Clear search
Close search
Google apps
Main menu
9713750646933349557
true
Search Help Center
true
true
true
true
true
263
false
false