Pay-per-click advertising gives quick visibility to businesses in search results. Most businesses invest in PPC marketing while they wait for their SEO strategies to come into effect to drive more traffic.
PPC marketing works on a bidding model where businesses pay to become visible on the most searched keywords related to their domain.
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At DO COMMUNICATION, we advise businesses of every shape and size to devise their online marketing through paid and organic mediums. In today’s post, we are sharing some of our rarer insights into the world of Google Ads, to help you plan an ad strategy for 2024 and beyond.
What is Google Ads Bidding?
Google Ads works through a system of bids for keywords. Google allows marketers to bid for ad spaces on the search engine result page (SERP) and inside the Google Display Network (GDN).
Getting a click is directly related to your placement in the search result or GDN. The higher your placement, the better your chance of getting a click. A Google Ads bid is the amount you are willing to pay per click.
However, Google Ads bidding is not just about placing the highest bid. Several factors define who wins each auction.
- Maximum Cost per Click: This represents the maximum amount you are willing to pay for every click.
- Ad Quality Score: It is determined based on expected click-through rate (CTR) which is determined by the relevance of the ad and the quality of your landing page experience.
- Ad Rank threshold: These are minimum quality thresholds placed by Google, that your ad needs to pass for visibility.
- Quality of competing ads: Yes, how you are ranked is also determined by the quality of your competition. If two competing ads are closely matched in the ad quality score, the chances of ranking are evenly distributed. But, if your ad and landing page carry higher relevance and a better UX, the chances of ranking become higher.
- Ad assets and formatting: Google also assesses your ad’s content to determine its effectiveness. Adding phone numbers, links, and CTAs can improve ad visibility and click-through rates.
- Other factors: Google has vast amounts of user behaviour data, which allows it to interpret search queries based on a variety of factors. Thus, ads delivery also happens based on predictive search context, including things like the keyword used, user location, device type, and timing of the search.
Now that you have understood the meaning of Google Ads bidding and the factors impacting ad placements, let’s move on to the bidding strategies used by marketers.
Types of Google Ads Bidding
To be successful, your bidding strategies have to vary by the objectives of your search engine marketing (SEM) goals. For example, if you want to generate leads, you need a lead generation campaign, but if you are new in town and want more people to know about your business, a visibility campaign is the way to go.
Here we share the top Google Ads bidding strategies that you can deploy in 2024.
1. Manual CPC
Ideal for campaigns that want to focus on more website traffic, this strategy lets you manually set the amount you wish to pay per click. You can adjust the bid amounts to manage spending manually. However, this also means frequent monitoring of ads and constantly changing bid amounts to optimize the ad performance.
Manual CPC ads allow detailed bid management and customisations at the keyword and ad group levels. You can use these campaigns to identify high-performing keywords and allocate more budget to them in real time. However, apart from being time-consuming, manual CPC ads also pose the potential risk of over or under-bidding.
2. Enhanced CPC
This Google Ads strategy is ideal for people who are looking for a little more automation in their ad campaigns, while still retaining overall control. This is a semi-automated Adwords strategy that modifies your manual bids to improve conversion.
Enhanced CPC ads work based on auction-time signals like browser, location, time of day, for adjusting the manual bid prices automatically. It may exceed your maximum set bid price temporarily to convert a potential lead. Enhanced CPC ads can be run on the Search Network and Google Display Network barring app install campaigns.
3. Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM)
This ad strategy works best for people who are looking for brand awareness rather than clicks or conversions. You bid to pay for every thousand impressions received by your ads.
CPM is effectively utilized when used for brand visibility campaigns, video ads, and ads on Google Display Network. For example, running ads for a new product launch or promotional ads that target specific audiences (as often used by political outfits). If you only want to pay when a user sees your ad, you can also opt for viewable CPM or vCPM.
4. Target Cost per Action (CPA)
If you are looking for an average cost per action instead of paying for every click, the CPA bidding strategy comes in handy. This strategy is automated to reach clear ROI targets. Google Ads will set the bids to achieve as many conversions as possible based on your targeted cost per action.
In the CPA bidding strategy, the bids are optimized based on your historical campaign information and real-time auction signals. However, sometimes target CPA ad campaigns may be limited by external influences or fluctuations in the market competition. Also, Google may limit the visibility of your ads to stay within the CPA targets, potentially missing out on competitive auctions.
5. Target Return on Ad Spend (tROAS)
A smart bidding strategy that uses Google AI to predict the value of a potential conversion and adjusts bids in real-time. tROAS can be used for multiple campaigns, including shopping and search ads.
For successful implementation of tROAS, you will generally need at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days to create a reliable foundation for the AI algorithm.
6. Cost per View (CPV)
Ideal for video campaigns, this Google Ads bidding strategy helps in tracking views and interactions. CPV campaigns let you bid and pay for video views and interactions with call-to-action (CTA) overlays, cards and banners.
In CPV, a view is counted when someone watches your video ad for at least 30 seconds or interacts with it. For shorter-duration ads, a view is counted when the entire duration is viewed or interacted with.
7. Maximize Conversions
This strategy uses your entire budget to get the maximum number of conversions possible. It is generally used by marketers when there is no specific ROI or CPA target.
Advantages include the highest number of conversions, real-time bid adjustments, and quick adaptation to user search behaviour. However, utilizing your budget in such a manner may often lead to increased spending. Hence, manual oversight is a prerequisite for running a Maximize Conversions campaign.
8. Maximize Conversion Value
A slight alteration of the previous strategy, here the aim is to get the highest possible conversion value within the defined budget. If conversions hold varying degrees of value for your business but you are not targeting any specific return on ad spends, this strategy can be ideal.
It uses AI to set bids and tries to maximize the total value of conversions you get. However, the performance of this type of Google Ads can be heavily influenced by the budget available. Sometimes it may also lead to higher conversion cost depending on the market.
9. Maximize Clicks
If you are looking for the maximum amount of clicks within a given budget, you can use the maximize clicks bidding strategy. Google will automatically set your bids to attract the highest possible clicks but you do have the option to set a maximum CPC bid limit to prevent overspending.
Pitfalls of maximizing clicks strategy include sacrificing click quality in favour of click volume, and chances of overspending if the maximum cost per click limits are not set.
10. Target Impression Share
If you want your ad to be always visible in Google SERPs, set your campaigns using Target Impression Share bidding. This strategy will place your ads at the top of the page - either at the first position or in the top three positions, based on your settings.
Target Impression Share bidding allows you to boost your brand presence and gives you control over where you want your ads to show up. However, if your campaign is not focused on brand visibility, this strategy may not align with your campaign goals while also leading to higher costs.
Also Read: Google Ads Launches Brand Recommendations Powered by AI
In conclusion
So, that concludes our refresher on Google Ads bidding. We hope this helps you finalize the kind of bidding your business needs right now. Remember, getting the best results requires mixing and matching bidding strategies and making tweaks at the right time.
Also, just in case you need more help, you can always speak to an ad campaigns expert at DO COMMUNICATION.
