If you’ve read my recent blog, ‘Introduction To Search Ads 360’ or you’re familiar with the platform itself, you’ll be aware that by using Search Ads, you can manage multiple ‘engines’ within one place – which is really useful when managing a large advertiser account as you can combine data from multiple engines to review KPIs.
Similarly, when using a bidding strategy within the platform, you’re able to optimise spend across multiple engines within an advertiser account, if you’re working towards the same goal.
This could be most useful if you wanted to run the same strategy across both your Google Ads & Microsoft Ads campaigns, where often campaign structures are mirrored.
These strategies are quite flexible in comparison to Google Ads, as you are not limited to only one-goal when setting these up, because you can actually optimise towards multiple goals within one strategy, e.g a visibility-based strategy with a target CPA constraint.
Unlike Google Ads, there is also the option to allow the strategy to adjust your remarketing, mobile, location bid adjustments, and to combine your strategy with Google’s auction-time bidding.
Once you are using a bidding strategy within SA360, you’ll have access to a bid strategy report. This report goes into much greater detail than your standard Google Ads bid strategy report, where you can see the actual performance of campaigns, keywords, locations, dynamic ad targets, and more.
As mentioned above, when setting up a strategy you are given the option to opt into remarketing, mobile, and location bid adjustments. However, if you don’t opt-in for this, Search Ads 360 will still make bid adjustment recommendations in your bid strategy report, which you could then apply manually.
Similar to Google Ads, you can see any issues or warnings within your bid strategy. These are usually bid constraints, but can be taken with a pinch of salt depending on the performance you’re actually seeing.
Within this section of the bid strategy report, you can also view distributions within the strategy, e.g % of keywords driving conversions, which is super insightful for identifying your top-performing keywords.
Setting up a bidding strategy is really straightforward in Search Ads, simply find the ‘bid strategies’ section on the left-hand side of the user interface, select + bid strategy and go through the motions of configuring the strategy to meet your account’s KPIs.
There are four goals you can optimise towards when setting up your strategy, these are as follows:
- Conversions
- Get the most actions while meeting a target CPA or monthly spend.
- Revenue
- Get the highest revenue while meeting a target Effective Revenue Share, ROAS, or monthly spend.
- Keywords
- Keep keywords at a specific position.
- Impression Share
- Target ad placement in search results.
Hopefully, this was a useful follow up to my last blog on Search Ads 360! Keep your eyes peeled for more of my tips and tricks on campaign management in Search Ads 360.
Alternatively, many of our paid media team are very skilled in campaign set up and management in the platform, so don’t hesitate to get in touch here and find out how we can help.
