Monthly spend bid strategies have been replaced by budget bid strategies, which can optimize monthly budgets for groups of campaigns. The migration schedule varies by goal type.
| Milestone | Conversions or revenue (ROI) goal | Clicks goal |
|---|---|---|
| No new monthly spend bid strategies | Completed (April 2019) | Completed (August 2019) |
| Auto migration to budget management | Completed (April 2019) | Completed (August 2019) |
| Review and enable new budget bid strategies | Completed (May 2019) | Completed (November 2019) |
| Monthly spend bid strategies paused | Completed (May 2019) | Completed (November 18, 2019) |
No new monthly spend bid strategies: You won't be able to create an ROI or clicks bid strategy that targets a specific monthly amount. Additionally, you won't be able to add any new entities to existing clicks goal strategies.
Auto migration to budget management: Where eligible, we’ll automatically migrate your monthly spend campaigns to budget management with budget plans targeting the same goal type. The new budget plans do not automatically have budget bid strategies enabled.
Review and enable new budget bid strategies: We recommend reviewing your budget groups and budget plans and enabling your new budget bid strategies as soon as possible to ensure a smooth transition.
Monthly spend bid strategies paused: Your monthly spend bid strategies are automatically paused. You won’t be able to reactivate them. The migrated entities associated with budget groups and plans that did not have budget bid strategies enabled will resort to manual bidding.
Learn more about the steps to migrate your monthly spend bid strategies to budget bid strategies.
If you have a fixed monthly budget—or some money left over from a quarterly budget—and you want to make sure you spend that exact amount on a group of biddable items, create a bid strategy that targets a monthly spend. Instead of adjusting bids to meet a specific CPA, ERS, or clicks target, a monthly-spend bid strategy adjusts bids to attempt to spend your budget exactly and evenly each month while maximizing the conversions you specify.
Spend the same amount each day, when possible
A monthly-spend bid strategy attempts to spend an even amount each day. But if you experience a large number of clicks on a given day, the Search Ads 360 bid strategy might spend more than on previous days. If this occurs, the bid strategy attempts to spend the remaining budget evenly for each day remaining in the month.
For example:
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You set a monthly spend target of $300.
The bid strategy attempts to spend $10 each day (in a month that has 30 days). -
On the 10th day of the month, you start experiencing a larger number of clicks than on previous days, and so you spend $15 instead of $10 for a few days.
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The bid strategy readjusts its daily spend target to $9 to stay within the remaining budget.
Starting in mid-month
A monthly-spend bid strategy applies the spend target to the current calendar month, even if the month has already started. If you start a monthly spend bid strategy in mid-month, the spend that's already occurred in the current month for the biddable items in the bid strategy will count toward the target. So you can start the bid strategy mid-month, and what you've spent so far will be deducted when calculating the remaining target.
For example:
- On July 11, you create a monthly-spend bid strategy with a $100,000 target.
- The spend for the biddable items is already $30,000.
- The bid strategy will set daily spend targets to attempt to spend $70,000 over the remaining 20 days of the month.
Campaign budget and bid strategy budget
The Smart Bidding Suite will control your spend to stay within the monthly target, but it won't exceed your campaign budgets to reach the target. Therefore, we recommend relaxing your campaign budgets to give the system a better chance to fully utilize your monthly target.
Exceptions to even spend and monthly spend target
In addition to large increases in the number of clicks, other changes and constraints may cause a monthly spend bid strategy to spend unevenly or to not match the target spend for the month.
If a bid strategy is applied near the end of a month, spend might not be exactly even each day of the following month. A bid strategy learns from the previous month and current days in the month and adjusts accordingly.
A bid strategy with a monthly spend target may over or under spend if any of the following circumstances occur:
- Keywords are added or removed from the bid strategy.
- A position constraint is set in the bid strategy.
- The bid range constraint is too narrow.
Even with a monthly spend target, Search Ads 360 applies constraints in the following order to set bids:
- Bids within the minimum/maximum bid range
- Bids within the position range
- Attempts to match target budget
Create a monthly-spend bid strategy
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Start creating a Clicks bid strategy.
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On the "Target" page, next to "Monthly spend target", enter the amount to spend each month.
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Finish creating the bid strategy.