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ARTICLE
Automated bid strategies (Smart Bidding) for Shopping campaigns in Google Ads (ECPC, Maximise Clicks, Maximise conversion value and Target ROAS) are known for their auction time bidding feature. They factor in various signals before optimising bids for every auction, helping you achieve your goals. But how do you know which strategy will work better for your company? Below we compare briefly these different bidding strategies for Shopping campaigns, considering goals, set-up and use cases.
Goal: ECPC is a partially automated bidding solution in Google Ads that can help increase conversions for merchants on manual bidding. It does so by adjusting bids up or down on query level for each auction based on each click’s likelihood to result in a conversion, while keeping total spend the same. When a retailer chooses ECPC, they are able to see conversion results that are better than, or at least the same as, the results you would get without it. Remember that cost per click (CPC) may go up or number of clicks may go down, but this is expected as ECPC reduces bids for clicks with low expected conversions. ECPC then uses the savings to bid higher when a click seems more likely to convert.
Set-up: ECPC can be enabled under campaign settings. For best results, campaigns should have more than 20 conversions per month. You are advised to let campaigns run for at least 15 days before evaluating their performance.
Use case: ECPC can be relevant for merchants who are on a 3rd party bid management system and want to complement their automated bidding solution with Google Ads Smart Bidding. As ECPC is partially automated, it does not interfere with bid strategies of 3rd party systems.
Goal: This bid strategy’s goal is to get the most clicks for the merchant’s budget. A CPC bid limit can be set, while it can be applied for Standard Shopping campaigns, where awareness is a primary objective.
Set-up: A Maximise clicks bid strategy can be applied at campaign or ad group level.
Use case: Maximise clicks can be used to increase clicks on low traffic products, or on low click share product categories, while keeping the campaigns within a certain spend. It can also be an effective bid strategy for a new product launch, where awareness and traffic are the primary goals.
Goal: With the Maximise conversion value bid strategy, merchants can get the most conversion value for a given budget. This bid strategy attempts to spend the available budget and is only available for Smart Shopping campaigns.
Set-up: This strategy is applied at campaign level.
Use case: The bid strategy Maximise conversion value is suitable for merchants who primarily focus on maximising sales with a specific budget, rather than optimising towards a ROAS target.
Goal: Target ROAS is a commonly used automated bid strategy for Standard and Smart Shopping campaigns. It aims to maximise the conversion value a merchant gets under a set ROAS target.
Set-up: Target ROAS can be enabled under campaign settings and can be applied at campaign or ad group level.
Use case: For any product category or brand where merchants need to meet a specific target, Target ROAS chooses the appropriate bid for every user and each auction. It factors in:
Q: Will I have to manually optimise bids for items based on updated benchmarks?
A: No. With Maximise conversion value and tROAS you no longer have to optimise each item for bids against the benchmarks, as these two automated bid strategies optimise bids for you. This means you can spend more time on other areas of your business, such as aligning your Shopping campaigns to your business objectives and feed optimisation.
Q: Can I create separate Shopping campaigns for different ROAS objectives and/or budgets?
A: Yes, if you have specific ROAS goals or allocated budgets for a set of items, you can create Shopping campaigns featuring just these products.
Q: Should I revert to manual bidding or ECPC during the holiday season?
A: You are recommended not to, as the performance of your Shopping campaigns might decrease if you switch from automated to manual bidding. Remember that ECPC adjusts bids based on the number of conversions, while tROAS and Maximise conversion value take into account sales volume.
Q: What is the recommended budget increase during seasonal events?
A: Even though it is not always easy to make predictions in a dynamic business environment, as a rule of thumb, you can look at the previous year’s seasonal events to estimate the expected traffic increase and then calculate accordingly a similar percentage for the year to come. For example, if traffic increased last year by 30%, take a look at this year’s spend, and increase it by 30%.
You can learn more about automated bidding for Shopping campaigns in the Google Ads Help Center.
This article was published by Google Shopping (CSS). Google Shopping is Google's CSS and a Premium CSS Partner.
