As an advertiser, it’s crucial to set the right bidding strategy in order to achieve campaign goals. By pairing campaign goals with the most relevant bidding strategy, advertisers can set their campaigns up for success.
When running PPC ads, a bidding strategy must be used. And, crucially, set the right one. While PPC activity generally charges per click - hence “Pay Per Click” - the bidding strategy is what guides the critical action(s) that advertisers pay for. For example, the goal of a campaign may be to generate video views, clicks, or conversions - this is the selection that should drive the choice in bidding strategy.
As an advertiser, it’s crucial to set the right bidding strategy in order to achieve campaign goals. For example, if a brand’s goal is to drive awareness, a campaign using a bidding strategy for conversions won’t be the most effective (either in cost or results) method of achieving this. Similarly, if a campaign’s goal is to generate lead form submissions, a bidding strategy focused on maximizing reach may not be the most effective route.
By pairing campaign goals with the most relevant bidding strategy, advertisers can set their campaigns up for success.
While the PPC experts of yesteryear will remember manual CPC bidding—where advertisers set a maximum that they’re willing to pay per click—automated or smart bidding strategies now optimize bids at auction time towards the desired action.
Without a set bid or bid cap in place, platforms such as Google Ads use a wealth of machine learning and data to find the best bid for each individual auction, taking into account a user’s contextual signals such as device, location, time of day, search history, remarketing list participation and more. In essence, smart bidding automatically sets the most competitive bid available at auction time for the advertiser’s desired action.
Manual CPC bidding is still used today for various purposes. Some advertisers and brands prefer to cap the amount that they pay per click and find this an effective way of managing campaign budgets and pacing while driving traffic.
However, manual bidding does have limitations compared to smart bidding strategies. With manual CPC bidding, the main lever advertisers have to pull in terms of optimizations is increasing bids. This doesn’t always leave a lot of flexibility during peak periods such as BFCM or with sudden surges in demand and can leave advertisers lagging behind if competitors suddenly enter the bidding war or increase their own budgets or bids.
We’ll start with the most straightforward bidding strategies: Manual CPC bidding and Maximize Clicks. Both of these bidding strategies are ideal for advertisers who want to drive traffic.
Advertisers using the Manual CPC bidding strategy can set maximum keyword bids at the ad group, keyword, or placement level. Generally speaking, on new campaigns, keyword research can inform the maximum bid that should be set, but for long-term success, these should be regularly reviewed and tweaked as required to remain competitive. While previously ECPC (Enhanced Cost Per Click) bidding could be used alongside Manual CPC to increase bids in auctions where conversions were likely automatically, this functionality was phased out in October 2024 and will be retired entirely in March 2025.
Maximize Clicks is an automated traffic bidding strategy that generates as many clicks as possible within an average monthly budget without adhering to a strict limit for any single click. Although this bidding strategy may fluctuate in spending day to day depending on demand, any monthly budget set will be used as a hard limit.
If the campaign goal is conversions, there are a plethora of bidding strategies to choose from! The one caveat is that conversion tracking must be in place to use conversion-focused strategies. Ideally, an account would have conversion history already (potentially generated via click-focused bidding strategies and campaigns, to begin with) for conversion bidding to be effective from the get-go.
The most straightforward conversion-focused bidding strategy is Maximize Conversions, which will generate as many conversions as possible within a set average daily budget. Remember, conversions can be set as phone calls, form submissions, sales, add-to-carts, newsletter sign-ups, YouTube subscriptions, app downloads, etc. Maximize Conversions is best used if an advertiser doesn’t have CPA restrictions or ROI targets in mind. If an advertiser needs to generate conversion volume but within a cost cap per conversion, the Target CPA automated bidding strategy is more appropriate. Target CPA is also a top choice for brands with multiple conversion types that have similar values - i.e. if a phone call, form submission, and live chat submission are all of equal or near-equal value to a business.
Note: With both Maximize Conversions and Target CPA, average daily budgets may be exceeded up to 2X to manage peak periods or unexpected fluctuations in demand - but the monthly budget set would not be exceeded.
Maximize Conversion Value is an effective choice for advertisers with multiple conversion types with different values to the business. For example, an advertiser may be trying to generate both lead gen form submissions and YouTube subscriptions with their video ads - but form submissions could be worth $20 each, whereas a single YouTube subscription could be worth <$0.01. In this case, Maximize Conversion Value will prioritize generating more of the higher-value conversions while still generating both conversion types. As with Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value is ideal for advertisers with no cost cap per conversion.
Target ROAS is the most effective bidding strategy for achieving maximum conversion values with a set cost cap or limit in mind. It automatically prioritizes delivering conversions that will generate a higher ROAS or that will meet the ROAS goal. Unique target ROAS goals can be set at the campaign level or by using a portfolio bidding strategy across an entire account.
Finally, there are five bidding strategies available on Google Ads to help advertisers maximize their impressions, reach, and viewability.
To enhance search visibility, the Target Impression Share bidding strategy should be the go-to and should be designed to help advertisers maximize their ad’s reach and/or position in the SERP (Search Engine Results page). Generally speaking, this bidding strategy is used for coverage to reduce competitor brand term bidding and/or to ensure brand term demand capture. However, it can also increase visibility during a sale or peak period or capture demand generated from TV or other widespread media coverage.
Across Display and Video campaigns - where generating reach and impressions are more likely to be the goal than on the SERP - there are different bidding strategies available to maximize reach. CPM (Cost Per Mille) bidding means that advertisers will pay for every 1,000 impressions generated across the YouTube and/or Display network. For advertisers with CPM goals or caps in mind, the tCPM (Target Cost Per Mille) bidding strategy can be used to maximize reach within a cost limit - individual impressions may cost more/less than the limit, but the overall CPM achieved will either meet or be beneath the target set. As well as CPM and tCPM, vCPM (Viewable CPM) can be used as a bidding strategy when the goal of the campaign isn’t to generate clicks or conversions from impressions, and there is a cost cap on the CPM generated. This could be used, for example, for an eCommerce brand with a sale coming up where the purpose of the ad is to share the dates of the upcoming sale among a loyal customer list audience.
Finally, CPV (Cost Per View) bidding is available for video ads. This allows advertisers to pay only if the ad is viewed or engaged with—not just if it appears on the screen. CPV bidding allows the setting of either a tCPV (Target Cost Per View) or maximum CPV.
The definition of a view - and therefore, when it’s charged - varies per placement:
Without the right bidding strategy, advertisers may struggle to achieve their campaign goals. The most important thing when selecting the right bidding strategy for campaigns is to pair it with goals. Remember, multiple bidding strategies can be set within the same account—using one per campaign.
If a campaign's goal is to drive awareness, we suggest viewability and reach-focused strategies such as CPV or CPM. To drive traffic, Maximize Clicks is the most effective automated bidding strategy. For conversions, Maximize Conversions is an excellent place to start for new campaigns or advertisers new to PPC - once conversion history thresholds have been met and advertisers are comfortable with their conversion values, CPAs, and/or ROAS benchmarks, an evolution to Target ROAS or Target CPA is generally the next step.