Google AdWords has upgraded its bidding options, giving online advertisers more control over how much they spend and the return they get for their investment.
The new flexible bid strategies are designed to give AdWords many of the features provided by outside paid bid management tools.
What's Changed
Google's flexible bidding allows advertisers to set up manual or automatic bidding on the ad positions that Google is constantly auctioning off.
With manual bidding, you set the price you are willing to pay for a particular ad position. If someone else posts a higher bid, their ad will appear instead of yours.
Automatic bidding gives the system the ability to adjust your bid according to the rules you set. To use one of the more basic examples, you can instruct the Google AdWords system to automatically raise your bid for the top position in the search results, but only if the higher price is needed to outbid a competitor for that particular keyword. This does not mean you will always win the bid, as the competitor in question can also set up automatic bidding for that spot. However, it does mean that you will appear in the top spot more often, and do so without raising your bid during the times that a lower price would still win the auction.
Flexible Bid Strategies
There are four strategies you can utilize with this new flexible bidding model:
- Target search page location. This is the above-mentioned example of targeting the top spot in search results. Its goal is visibility, and it is most useful when fending off a direct competitor.
- Maximize clicks. For this strategy, Google uses algorithms to place your ads so that they will get the greatest number of clicks possible without exceeding your ad budget. In other words, its goal is to produce the lowest cost per click.
- Target CPA. This strategy involves setting a target CPA (cost per acquisition), or the price you are willing to pay for a site visitor who actually converts. Google will strive to get you the most possible conversions without exceeding your target CPA. If you know each customer's worth, target CPA allows you to decide what ROI you will get from your advertising dollars.
- Enhanced CPC. Enhanced cost-per-click (ECPC) automatically raises your bid for ads that are more likely to result in a conversion.
Automatic bidding does not mean that your AdWords advertising is now automatic. You still have to determine what bidding rules to set, which strategies to use with which campaigns and what keywords to include (or exclude). And then there is the question of whether search engine advertising or search engine optimization makes more sense for your company.
Still, having these flexible bidding strategies available is certainly a plus for Google, and it gives you more options when it comes to setting your marketing budget and maximizing your marketing ROI.
