Understanding bidding basics

Question 1

Focus on clicks

CPC bidding gives you these choices:

Answer 1

Automatic bidding

This is the easiest way to bid. Set a daily budget and let AdWords adjust your CPC bids to bring you the most clicks possible within that budget.
Manual bidding

Take full control of your CPC bids. Manual bidding lets you set bids at the ad group level, or for individual keywords or ad placements, so you know you're bidding just what you want for the clicks that mean the most to you.

Question 2

Focus on impressions

CPM bidding, like CPC manual bidding, lets you set bids at the ad group level, or for individual placements. Note that CPM bidding is only available for the following campaign types:

Answer 2

“Display Network only - All features”

“Display Network only - Remarketing”

Question 3

Focus on conversions

With this advanced bidding method, you tell AdWords the amount you’re willing to pay for a conversion, or cost-per-acquisition (CPA).

To use CPA bidding you must have conversion tracking turned on, among other things, so CPA bidding is suited for

Answer 3

for intermediate and advanced AdWords users.

Question 4

Each bid strategy is suited for different kinds of campaigns and advertising goals. For the purposes of bidding, you’ll want to consider three basic types of goals, along with your current campaign settings.

1. If you want to generate traffic to your website, focusing on
2. If you want to increase brand awareness – not drive traffic to your site – focusing on
3. If you want customers to take a direct action on your site, and you’re using conversion tracking, then it may be best to focus on

Answer 4

1. focusing on clicks could be ideal for you. Cost-per-click (CPC) bidding – manual or automatic – may be right for your campaign.
2. focusing on impressions may be your strategy. You can use cost per thousand impression (CPM) bidding to put your message in front of customers.
3. focus on conversions. Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bidding lets you do that.

Question 5

With manual CPC bidding, you can fine-tune your maximum CPC bids to help control the cost and volume of clicks on your ads. Manual CPC bidding could be a good choice for you if your campaign fits this description:

Answer 5

You’d like to control maximum CPC bids for individual ad groups, keywords, or placements.
You’re mainly interested in increasing website traffic, not necessarily brand awareness.
You don’t need to reach a target budget every month. (If you do need to reach a target budget, automatic bidding may be a better choice.)
Your campaign targets the Search Network, the Display Network, or both.

Question 6

Focus on impression Manual CPM Bidding

Manual bidding for impressions, also known as CPM bidding, lets you control the visibility of your ads by fine-tuning your maximum CPM bids.

Here are some cases in which we’d recommend manual CPM bidding:

Answer 6

Your campaign type is “Display Network only - Remarketing”, not Google Search Network.
Your ads are designed to increase awareness, but not necessarily generate clicks or traffic.
You prefer the traditional industry metrics of CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) campaigns.
You’re targeting particular placements, not just keywords. (Combined with placement targeting, bidding for impressions can help ensure your ads appear to a specific audience that will be interested in your ads.)
You’re mainly interested in increasing brand awareness. Image ads and other multimedia formats often serve that purpose best, and these ad formats run on the Display Network.
Your message is in the ad itself, so you don’t need people to click through to your site. This may apply to events (such as a television premiere) or political advertising.

Question 7

CPA (cost-per-acquisition) bidding is an advanced option that lets you bid directly for conversions.

Your campaign must meet a few requirements in order to be eligible to use CPA bidding:

Answer 7

You have conversion tracking enabled.
Your campaign has received at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days. The AdWords system requires this conversion history in order to make accurate predictions about your future conversion rate.
Your campaign has been receiving conversions at a similar rate for at least a few days.
Your campaign targets the Search Network, the Display Network, or both.

Question 8

CPA (cost-per-acquisition) bidding is an advanced option that lets you bid directly for conversions.

Your campaign must meet a few requirements in order to be eligible to use CPA bidding:

They also recommend what:

Answer 8

Your campaign has been using conversion tracking for at least two weeks. The AdWords system relies on historical conversion data, so the longer conversion tracking has been running, the more data the system has and the better job it can do optimizing your ROI. If your campaign receives low traffic, we suggest running conversion tracking even longer before trying CPA bidding.
Your campaign is direct-response oriented. For example, the campaign focuses on generating sign-ups or sales on an e-commerce website.
Your campaign has a single well-defined conversion type, such as a completed purchase or sign-up.
Your campaign has a relatively stable conversion rate, with no major changes (such as redefining the conversion event or moving the conversion tracking code) within the last two weeks.

Question 9

Once you’ve identified which keywords, locations, times, and devices are getting good results, you can adjust your bids accordingly. For instance, if a keyword has a low average CPC but each click converts well, you may try

Answer 9

increasing its max. CPC bid.

Question 10

If a keyword has a high average CPC but clicks seldom result in conversions, you may try

Answer 10

try reducing its max. CPC bid.

CPC bid is likely to decrease your ad’s average position for that keyword, the number of impressions and clicks it receives, and, as a result, its cost. Not only can this strategy improve your ROI on low-performing keywords, but it frees up part of your budget to invest in more valuable keywords.

Question 11

A couple things to keep in mind when thinking about bidding changes:

Answer 11

We recommend changing your bids in small increments, then see how many clicks and conversions your keywords begin to accrue before editing again. Also, remember that Internet traffic is always changing, so it’s important to re-evaluate your bids regularly.
It’s possible to improve your ad’s position by improving the quality of your ads, keywords, and website, without increasing costs. The higher the Quality Score for your keyword, the less you pay for a given ad position, and vice versa.

Question 12

Bidding tips and for the display network

Clickthrough rates are often lower on the Display Network, because it can be

Answer 12

be harder to get a reader’s attention.

Question 13

Bidding tips and for the display network

If you’re showing your ad on the Display Network, you can set a Display Network Max.

Answer 13

Max. CPC bid for clicks that happen just on the Display Network.

Question 14

Bidding tips and for the display network

Similar to how you would evaluate keywords, if your ads perform well on certain placements, you can consider raising the

Answer 14

the bid for those placements.

Question 15

Bidding tips and for the display network

Instead of paying per click, you can pay by the number of times your ad is shown. That’s called

Answer 15

cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) bidding, since you pay for every 1,000 times your ad appears.

Question 16

Tools for custom bid estimates

What are the tools for custom bid estimates

Answer 16

1. Bid Simulator
2. First Page Bid Estimates
3. Opportunities tab

Question 17

The regular Bid Simulator allows you to estimate the

Answer 17

clicks, costs, impressions, conversions, and conversion value your ads would have received if you had used a different max. CPC bid for your keyword or ad group.

You can find it on the Ad groups and Keywords tabs.

Question 18

What is the Bid Simulator

Answer 18

AdWords bid simulators help you see whether different bids could have affected your ad performance over the last seven days on the Search Network.

Question 19

The Campaign Bid Simulator can be used to model and apply bid changes across your account, and display details at the

Answer 19

the campaign level. Find it on the Campaigns tab.

Question 20

The bid simulators collect and analyze data from ad auctions on Google and the

Answer 20

Search Network from the last seven days, while considering information such as Quality Score, your competitors’ bids, and keyword traffic

Question 21

Using bid simulator for conversion estimates

If you’re using Conversion Tracking, the simulators offer conversion estimates to help you understand the number of

Answer 21

conversions your ads might have received if you had set different bids.

Question 22

What are some information conversion details to keep in mind?

Answer 22

1. Conversion delays: Conversions can be reported up to 90 days after the click, depending on the conversion window you’ve chosen.
2. Sparse conversion data: There is usually less conversion data than click or impression data when calculating these estimates, so conversions can be more difficult to estimate. The longer the history and the more conversions you have, the more accurate these estimates will be.
3. Changes to Conversion Tracking: Removing or moving the Conversion Tracking tag could invalidate the estimates.
4. Conversion definitions: Conversions rely not only on ad clicks, but also on the actions that customers take on your site. This can also make them more difficult to predict.

Question 23

Benefits of using bid simulator?

Answer 23

You can view bid changes in aggregate and model changes even when keywords or ad groups might not have enough data for this on their own.
Bid scaling is available, so you can see what might happen if you increased or decreased all your bids by a specific percentage (10%, for example).
Because campaign-level bid changes can increase traffic significantly, we’ll tell you whether you need to increase your budget and, if so, what to change it to.
You can model what happens if you changed all your bids in the campaign to a fixed value. If you choose to apply one of these campaign-wide bid changes, your ad group default bids will be changed to this fixed value, and your keyword-level bids will be erased.
You can download the bid simulation data at the account or campaign level.
You can download an AdWords Editor-compatible file with the bid amounts to which ad groups and keywords must be set.

Question 24

Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bidding

Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bidding is a bidding method that lets you tell AdWords the amount you’re

Answer 24

willing to pay for a conversion.

Question 25

CPA bid types

Answer 25

A target CPA bid is the average amount you’d like to pay for a conversion. Some bids will be above this target and some will be below it, but altogether, the cost per conversion should average to the Target CPA you set.
A maximum CPA bid (max. CPA bid) is the most you’re willing to pay for each conversion, such as a purchase or sign-up. When you use Conversion Optimizer, most of your bids will be below whatever maximum you set.

Question 26

Your actual CPA depends on factors outside Google’s control such as changes to your website and ads, or external factors such as increased competition. So it’s possible that your actual CPA may

Answer 26

exceed the max. CPA or target CPA bid you specify.

Question 27

Conversion Optimizer uses historical conversion data to predict the likelihood your ads will

Answer 27

will convert.

Question 28

If your actual conversion rate turns out to be lower than the predicted conversion rate, your actual CPA may

Answer 28

exceed your max. CPA or target CPA bid.

Question 29

But because the system is designed to adjust over the long term, the likelihood of your actual CPA exceeding your bid

Answer 29

decreases the longer you use CPA bidding.

Question 30

About Conversion Optimizer

The goal of Conversion Optimizer is to get you the most

Answer 30

most conversions given your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) goals.

Question 31

About Conversion Optimizer

Rather than focusing on clicks (CPC) or impressions (CPM), Conversion Optimizer focuses on maximizing

Answer 31

conversions.

Question 32

About Conversion Optimizer

Conversion Optimizer will focus either on conversions or

Answer 32

or converted clicks depending on the conversion bid metric that you choose on your conversion settings page.

Question 33

How Conversion Optimizer works

Using historical information about your campaign, Conversion Optimizer automatically finds the optimal equivalent

Answer 33

CPC bid for your ad each time it’s eligible to appear. You still pay per click, but you no longer need to adjust your bids manually to reach your conversion goals.

Question 34

Conversion Optimizer provides you with a recommended

Answer 34

recommended max. CPA bid and a recommended target CPA bid to help get you started

Question 35

Tips for Conversion Optimizer Success

Answer 35

Set either a max. CPA or target CPA bid based on which metric is most familiar to you.
Raise your max. or target CPA bid ito increase traffic and conversions. Lower your max. or target CPA bid if you want to lower your average CPA. Traffic will likely decrease.
Start with the recommended CPA bid and modify your bids often to find what’s right for you.
Use Conversion Optimizer with existing campaigns. The longer a campaign has used conversion tracking and the more conversions it’s received in the past 30 days, the more data that Conversion Optimizer can draw upon to make predictions.
Keep in mind that changes in ad performance are natural, and you may need to use Conversion Optimizer for some time to get an accurate understanding of its effects on your campaign’s performance.
Don’t make huge changes to a campaign while running Conversion Optimizer (example: removing all ad groups and replacing them with new ones). Do make small changes to your campaign that fit your business needs (examples: adding/removing keywords, changing creative, changing landing page).
Don’t remove your conversion tracking code from your website or move it to a different location while running Conversion Optimizer. Doing either of these could result in significant changes in which clicks lead to reported conversions. As a result, Conversion Optimizer may need up to several weeks to adjust to these changes.
Compare your CPA and conversion rate before and after using Conversion Optimizer to gauge its impact on your campaign.
Remember, you can always turn off Conversion Optimizer, and your campaign will revert to the previous CPC bids you were using.
If you’re consistently hitting your budget, increase it to allow more visibility for your ads.

Question 36

If you’re running a campaign to promote mobile app downloads, Conversion Optimizer can help you get the most downloads for your budget. Here are some suggestions to setting up your campaign:

Answer 36

Keep track of your performance over the first two weeks, then exclude sites and categories that aren’t reaching your goals.
Once you’ve optimized your campaign and reached a sustainable CPA, begin using Conversion Optimizer, and set a target CPA that’s consistent with your performance to date. Note that download conversion tracking is only available for advertisers promoting Android apps and for existing users of the AdMob iOS translation service.
Use these targeting methods to further refine your traffic:

Question 37

Changes in traffic

If you notice a drop in traffic (clicks and conversions) after turning on Conversion Optimizer, there could be a few things going on:

Answer 37

1. Your CPA bid might be too low.
2. Instead of conversions, you may be looking at clicks or impressions. Because Conversion Optimizer aims to get you more conversions by avoiding traffic that doesn’t result in conversions, you may see a decrease in impressions or clicks while increasing the number of conversions.
3. Conversion Tracking is disabled. If you remove conversions that you’re tracking, then the ads in campaigns using Conversion Optimizer will stop running.
4. Your ad group is missing a CPA bid. If your ad group doesn’t have a CPA bid, then the ads in this ad group will stop showing while in Conversion Optimizer.

Question 38

Why measure conversions

Measuring conversions is helpful for your business if you’re trying to do the following:

Answer 38

1. Connect your ads and keywords to your business goals
2. Boost your ROI: Not all keywords are equal. But if you know which keywords bring you the most business and which ones don’t, you can make smarter investments in those keywords and avoid the unhelpful ones altogether.
3. See how customers interact with your ads across devices: Sometimes your customers click on your ad on one device, and then make their purchase on another device. These are called cross-device conversions, and you can see them in the Estimated Total Conversions column in your AdWords account.

Question 39

Counting conversions Question 1

There are two important Conversion Tracking metrics: conversions and converted clicks. You can view both metrics in your conversion tracking reports.

Answer 39

1. Conversions
   For each conversion action, you can choose to count all or unique conversions. The “Conversions” column of your reports will display all conversions within your chosen conversion window, according to your selected counting method. The “All” setting is useful for counting all instances of sales, while “Unique” is used to count only one conversion when the same person generates multiple leads (example: one person fills out multiple forms requesting to be contacted about one of your services).

Question 40

Counting conversions Question 2

There are two important Conversion Tracking metrics: conversions and converted clicks. You can view both metrics in your conversion tracking reports.

Answer 40

Converted clicks
The “Converted clicks” column shows you the number of AdWords ad clicks resulting in a one or more conversions within your chosen conversion window. Note that the converted clicks count doesn’t reflect the relative value of each converting click. Clicks that leads to a high-value conversions (such as multiple purchases) aren’t distinguished from those that lead to low-value conversions (such as a single newsletter sign-up).

Question 41

How Conversion Tracking works and set-up

Every time a customer clicks your ad on Google.com or selected Google Network sites, a temporary cookie is placed on the customer’s computer so a conversion can be recorded when the customer reaches the conversion page.

What are the two tracking conversion methods

Answer 41

Online conversions
To set up conversion tracking for your website, you’ll generate the snippet of HTML and JavaScript code in AdWords. Then, you’ll place the code on your website. See our set-up guide below for step-by-step directions.

Offline conversions
If you’d like to track offline conversions, such as a sale over the phone or in your office, you’ll follow steps for tracking and importing offline conversions so that you can view them in AdWords.

Question 42

Security and privacy

Google’s security standards are strict. Only pages containing the Google conversion code are tracked through this program. We use data encryption and secure servers.

Privacy is also very important to Google. That’s why we do the following to protect your customers’ privacy:

Answer 42

Conversion Tracking cookies persist for a limited time only.
Conversions aren’t isolated: This means that you can’t match conversion data to specific customers, just see overall data for ads and keywords.
Conversion Tracking includes the option to notify customers about cookies: During the setup process, we’ll help you create a notification box for your website that lets your customers know they’re being tracked. This is known as the Google Site Stats box, which appears on your conversion page – the page customers see after they complete a