You know what’s really improved over the last few years? Bid strategies in Google Ads.  Even just a mere 3-4 years ago, bid strategies in the platform weren’t very good and we almost always preferred implementing and managing manual CPC changes over using an automated strategy. As a team, we felt this gave us more control of our clients’ campaigns and a better understanding of what was driving performance.

However, in the last couple of years Google’s bid strategies, now dubbed “Smart Bidding,” have really improved. Even though we don’t always have many insights into the signals driving their great performance – they do work! In fact, once we get enough conversion volume in our PPC accounts, we are almost always testing different bid strategies to see which ones help us squeeze out the maximum performance. And, if not using Smart Bidding directly in Google Ads or we’re looking for deeper insights, we are using one of our favorite tools called AdSpert to help manage our bids and get insight on exactly what segments are being adjusted and by how much each day.

So, what’s this news about bid bundling? According to a recent announcement, Google Ads’ bid strategies are getting a few new updates, or as we like to call it “bundled bid strategies.” Yes, we made that up. In a nutshell though, Google Ads is bundling a few existing bid strategies into a single type so that PPC marketers don’t have SO MANY options to choose from and need to test out before finding success. The changes are as follows:

• Target CPA (tCPA) bidding option will be going away.
• Maximize conversion will no longer be a standalone bid strategy. It will now have an optional target CPA field.
• Target ROAS (tROAS) bidding option will be going away.
• Maximize conversion value will no longer be a standalone bid strategy. It will now have an optional target ROAS field.

Interesting right? To help you figure out how to use the best Smart Bidding option, Google put together this handy chart for us.

According to Google, there are also some important notes with these changes as well. 

• First, this update only applies to campaign-level strategies at the moment, and will be effective over the next few weeks. While Google also intends to update portfolio-level bid strategies, that update isn’t expected until 2022. 
• Next, even though the options you select are going to be a bit different, there should be no actual impact to bidding behavior due to this update. Using Maximize conversion value with a Target ROAS should have the same bidding behavior as your old Target ROAS strategy. Same concept goes for Maximize conversions with a Target CPA – the way Google bids should remain unchanged from your old Target CPA strategy. 
• And lastly, this update applies to new campaigns, only. All existing campaigns may continue to use their current strategies – as Google isn’t yet automatically switching your current tCPA or tROAS strategies into this format.

What do you think of the new bid bundles? Drop us a line below and give us your thoughts!