1. What's automated bidding?

Bidding is a key success factor for online marketing, and the bid strategy you choose directly influences
how your campaigns perform and how visible your ads are in the unique moments that are important to
your business. Google Ads offers several bid strategies that are tailored to your marketing goals and
different types of campaigns. Depending on your focus, you can determine which strategy is best for you.

In this module, you'll learn how to explain the challenge with setting bids and recall the benefits of how
automated bidding solves the challenge.

What's automated bidding?

Setting the appropriate bid is a complex but essential challenge. Below are some key factors to keep in
mind.

 Performance

Bids influence how visible your ads are and the amount of interaction you get in each unique moment. If
you don't bid efficiently, you could miss valuable conversions. 

 Auctions

Given the dynamic nature of our auctions, the appropriate bid can often be a moving target that's
challenging to reach at scale when using manual bidding.

 User Journey Complexities

Many signals influence user behavior. Their intent and likelihood to complete valuable actions for your
business vary based on location, time, device, and so on. Taking all these signals into account for every
auction and bidding can be done through automation.

Benefits of Google Ads automated bidding

The goal of any marketing campaign is to reach the right user with the right message at the right time. As
consumers span across multiple devices, the customer journey has become more complex and so has
setting bids based on each user's context.

Google Ads automated bidding is the best solution to efficiently account for all available signals to help
improve performance.
Machine learning

Automated bidding uses machine learning to algorithmically help you set the appropriate bid for each
and every auction. This takes much of the heavy lifting and guesswork out of setting bids, so you can
meet your performance goals more efficiently and accurately.

Time saved
 Cross-referencing audience data with context to establish intent and set the appropriate bid is a
complex and time-consuming task. Automation offers a way to alleviate this strain on marketing
resources.

Auction-time bidding

Our bidding algorithms tailor bids to each user’s unique context, using relevant signals present at
auction time. This is a unique capability in the market, as it allows for bid differentiation, with a high
degree of precision based on the conversion opportunity of each auction.

Depth of signals used and cross analysis

Our algorithms integrate a large variety of signals and consider new ones to evaluate user intent. They
also go a step beyond traditional signal analysis by recognizing and adjusting for meaningful
interactions between combinations of signals while constantly considering new ones.

Tip
You can implement a Google Ads automated bidding strategy to get the benefits of auction-time bidding
while still using a third-party management solution.

2. Choose the right bidding

strategy
It’s important to choose a bidding strategy that reflects your marketing goals. Google Ads offers several bid
strategies to choose from. Which strategy you choose depends on which networks your campaign is
targeting and whether you want to focus on improving clicks, visibility, conversion, and so on.

In this module, you'll learn how to identify the right bidding strategy based on your marketing goals.

Meet Hiroko
Hiroko is the digital marketing manager at Your Adventure, which sells bicycles and cycling gear both online
and in brick-and-mortar locations around the world. She's focused on increasing the number of bicycles
that her company sells online, so tracking conversions is very important to her.

But, there are so many bidding strategies to choose from. Let’s dive into the different automated bidding
strategies available to help Hiroko choose the right one.

Awareness-based bidding strategies

You should choose this bid strategy if you want to make sure that your ad is visible for certain queries and
even at certain locations on the page.

 Goal
 Visibility

Bid strategies to choose from

Target impression share: This helps make sure your ads are meeting a specific impression share
threshold for a specific location on the search results page: anywhere, top of page, or absolute top of
page.

Use case
This is for raising awareness of your brand and campaigns that include brand terms.

Consideration-focused bidding strategies

You should choose this bid strategy if you want to drive as many clicks as possible within a set level of
spend.

Goal

Clicks

Bid strategies to choose from

Maximize clicks: Set bids to try to get you as many clicks as possible within a target spend amount that
you choose.

Use case

 Budget-constrained campaigns focused on driving clicks

 Drive more click volume
 Maximize traffic when extra budget is received
 Upper funnel keywords that have high assist value in conversion.

Conversion-focused bidding strategies

Choose one of these bid strategies if you're tracking actions post-click, valuing conversions equally, and
looking to maximize the number of conversions. 

Goal
Conversions

Bid strategies to choose from

 Maximize Conversions: Drive as much conversion volume as possible within your budget. You don't
need to provide a specific cost per click (CPC), cost per acquisition (CPA), or return on ad spend (ROAS)
target. 

Target cost-per-acquisition (tCPA): This strategy automatically sets bids to help you
increase conversions while reaching your average cost-per-acquisition goal.

Enhanced cost-per-click (eCPC): This strategy automatically adjusts your manual bid up or

down based on each click’s likelihood to result in a conversion.

Use case

Maximize Conversions: 
 Advertisers who want to maximize the number of conversions for a campaign. Advertisers
that want to spend a fixed budget and don’t have an explicit CPA/ROAS goal

Target cost-per-acquisition (tCPA): 

 Maximize amount of conversions, without considering order value — such as lead
generation and eCommerce businesses. 
o Note: For a Display campaign using Target CPA, you can choose to pay for
conversions billing.

Enhanced cost-per-click (eCPC): 

 For Search, this is for advertisers who want to set the core bid manually or through third-
party bidding tools, with an added layer of real-time optimization. 
 For Display, this is for advertisers who do not have conversion tracking, use a third-party
bidding system, or insist on setting bids manually with an added layer of real-time optimization. It's also
great for lead generation and to drive online sales.

Note
You must be tracking conversions for conversion-focused bid strategies to work properly, with the
exception of eCPC on Display.

Revenue-focused bidding strategies

Choose this bid strategy if you’re tracking the revenue or value associated with your conversions and want
to maximize it at a specific return on ad spend target. 

They’re a good fit if you’re tracking conversion value and have campaigns that have at least 50 conversions
in the past 30 days for Search and at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days for Display.

Goal

Revenue
Bid strategies to choose from

Target return on ad spend (Target ROAS): Automatically sets bids to help get as much conversion value
as possible at the target return on ad spend (ROAS) you set

Use case

If you want to automatically optimize bids to maximize revenue within your target ROAS

Note
Enhanced CPC, Target CPA, Maximize Conversions, and Target ROAS fall specifically under the umbrella of
Google Ads Smart Bidding. They’re conversion-based bid strategies that leverage an exclusive set of
signals to bid at auction time.

Once you’ve decided which automated bid strategy works for your business, check out the Finding success
with Smart Bidding: Google Best Practices (Search) and the Smart Bidding Guide (Display) to help further
simplify your account structure and get the most of your bid strategy.