Google AdWords is an extremely useful platform for business owners who want to get their ads seen by a target demographic. Between the extensive range of the network, coupled with Google’s high powered algorithms, it’s no wonder why AdWords is the most profitable part of Google’s business. But with so many marketers trying to run ads, it can make managing the bidding process a time-consuming affair. Google has introduced several new bidding options to make it easier and faster to use AdWords.
The new bidding options work for Google Shopping ad campaigns. These new targeting options include maximizing clicks, leveraging Enhanced Cost Per Click (eCPC) and optimizing for Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
“Last year, we launched powerful reporting and campaign management features like Auction insights to provide more visibility into the auction and ranking for Google Shopping,” wrote Dimitris Meretakis, the Product Manager for Google Shopping on the AdWords blog. “Going one step further today, we’re excited to introduce a suite of bidding strategies for Shopping campaigns. These enable you to go beyond manual max CPC bidding to deliver specific bids for each auction, tailored to people’s context.”
Business owners who are new to using AdWords may want to consider the new automatic bidding option for maximizing clicks. This option lets Google automatically adjust the bids for an ad to drive the most traffic. In the blog post, Google suggests this bidding format will be a great way to promote doorbusters on a store’s website or in-store with local inventory ads.
One of the first advertisers to use the new optimize clicks method, Mario Märzinger, the Vice President Marketing at home24 said, “We are extremely happy with the ability of maximize clicks to deliver more traffic at significant cost savings! Testing this bid strategy on one of our key product lines, we received 7% more clicks at 13% lower CPCs one month into the test.”
For marketers who want to manage the CPC on their own or with the help of third-party solutions, there is a new bidding option to provide more options through enhanced CPC. When marketers use this option, Google optimizes on top of the marketer’s bid in real-time so they get more conversions or sales at a similar cost. According to data from early adopters, advertisers get as many as 7 percent more conversions at the same cost with eCPC.
Radhika Aggarwal, co-founder and Chief Business Officer at Shopclues.com who tested the eCPC wrote, “We manage our bids as much as we can, and by using enhanced CPC, we’re able to optimize our bids based on user context and auction dynamics. Enhanced CPC’s real-time bidding has helped ShopClues improve our ROI and really elevate our performance.”
The final option uses algorithms to deliver more revenue-driven dynamic bidding. For the most part, Google does the heavy lifting. Marketers choose the desired ROAS and it’ll dynamically bid so products that’ll drive more revenue will get higher bids. However, option is only currently available to a handful of advertisers, but advertisers can request access to the beta trial for ROAS by using an online form.
This is a very good development that helps business owners and advertisers make the most of their PPC budgets, based on what matters the most to them. For more information on updates and changes to Google, read this article on other useful changes to Google Shopping.