Smart Bidding

As Google has been preaching for a while now, "the era of complex and unwieldy Google Ads account structures is over". And yesterday rather than today. For a few months now, Google has been hammering away at the Hagakure principle. They prefer to see accounts that are consolidated, that contain fewer campaigns and are less complex. For many, this goes against all logic. Why lump together all your structured campaigns that you have nicely under control? Because we are at a point where we have to accept that artificial intelligence is getting smarter and smarter and can eventually perform certain tasks better than ourselves. We should not look down on this with aversion. But we should embrace it as a new tool that we can use to achieve our goals. So here we are talking about Smart Bidding, the automated bidding strategies that are getting smarter as data is gathered.

The algorithm

Thanks to this Smart Bidding, we can, as we have already read, greatly simplify our account structures. Previously, we had dozens of campaigns running for the same business goal. We would split up campaigns based on match type, demographics, devices and so on. But in the end, the campaigns were all selling the same product. Today, thanks to Smart Bidding, we can consolidate all these campaigns into one big campaign. Because of this, we are going to generate a lot more data from which the algorithm is going to get smarter and smarter. So it knows better and better what works best in your campaign, then it algorithm can use the advertising budget more and more efficiently. Of course, this principle has existed for a number of years. But still, many companies and marketers are afraid to give up this control. Therefore, today we are going to discover why Smart Bidding is a breath of fresh air for your campaigns and for yourself as a marketer.

Intent of the search query

Previously, we would set enhanced CPCs on keywords based on match types or their intent. Based on how likely it is that people who enter a certain search query will actually convert. But ultimately, this is guesswork. Especially when you know that every day, 15% of all searches in Google are new. An impossible task if you want to cover everything. But thanks to Smart Bidding, we can use broad matches that can reach these new search queries. Based on the intention of the search query, the algorithm will determine which bid it wants to make.

Smart Data Usage

The next reason Smart Bidding can have a greater impact on your conversions is the fact that Smart Bidding can optimize itself based on the conversion history across your entire ad account. Even when you only have one campaign running that uses Smart Bidding. So this means when you set up a new campaign using Smart Bidding, the algorithm will start gathering data from other campaigns to feed this new campaign with data, so it immediately knows how much to bid on which search queries. However, it is important that you need to have enough data in the other campaigns for this to work optimally.

Less management, more strategy

Thanks to these automatic bidding strategies, we need to spend a lot less time meticulously optimising our campaigns. This means that, as a performance advertiser, we can focus more on the strategic aspect of our job. How we use our Maximising ROAS and ensure that the customer can make as much turnover as possible.