Give Smart Bidding Strategies a Helping Hand

More and more advertisers are now using Google Ads smart bidding strategies instead of manual bid optimization. With the help of machine learning, smart bidding learns what works based on a variety of signals. From experience, these strategies can work very well if given the right conditions, and here we share a tip that can help the algorithms along the way.

Prepare smart bidding strategies for upcoming campaigns

For smart bidding strategies to perform well, we need to give them both time and the right conditions. When you implement or change a smart bidding strategy, a learning period begins. During this time, the system gathers the data it needs to optimize bids. For example, it learns which day of the week, time of day, or age group tends to convert better than others. The length of this period varies depending on the amount of data, such as the number of conversions. Over time, smart bidding gains a better understanding of your business, your target audience, and the customer journey. It also learns how sales fluctuate with the seasons, since they are rarely constant throughout the year. However, what it doesn’t know is your internal campaign plan, which can cause turbulence in performance when offers on the site change. For example, you might lose sales during promotional periods because the bidding strategy is optimizing for the product’s regular price. That’s why it’s beneficial to let the system know that buying behavior will change.

Sharpen results with seasonality adjustments

There is a feature in Google Ads called seasonality adjustments. The name is actually a bit misleading since it’s not really designed for long seasonal changes, but rather for shorter campaigns. “Campaign adjustment” or “behavior adjustment” might have been a more fitting name. With the seasonality adjustment feature, you can tell smart bidding in advance that you expect a temporary change in conversion rate during a specific period. This gives the algorithms the advantage of preparing for, among other things, higher impression share and more traffic during that time. Google themselves recommend using the feature for 1–7 days, not longer. You’ll find it by going to Bid Strategies under Shared Library in Tools and Settings. Then click on Advanced Controls and select Seasonality Adjustments at the top. Click the plus sign to create a new adjustment and fill in the following:

• Name of the seasonality adjustment, for example “Easter Sale”
• Start and end date and time of the campaign
• Which campaign(s) are affected
• Expected increase or decrease in conversion rate as a percentage

Things to keep in mind:

It’s a good idea not to just guess the expected conversion rate, but instead analyze traffic from previous campaigns to create an estimate. If you’re worried about losing profitability during the period, it might be safer to aim a little lower.

We hope you find this tip useful, and good luck with your optimization!