About Smart Bidding for store visits

Available for Search, Shopping, and Video campaigns, Smart Bidding for store visits allows you to optimize for store visits, using the same bid strategies used for online conversions. Learn more about Smart Bidding

Store visits are currently supported in Smart Bidding for Display campaigns for select advertisers only. If you are running Display campaigns in the same account as Search (or Shopping) campaigns and also report store visits for Display campaigns, you can include store visits in Display Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize conversions, and Maximize conversion value bid strategies.

About store visit conversions

If visits to your physical locations are important to your business, you can use conversion tracking to help you understand how your ad clicks and viewable impressions influence store visits. Learn more about store visit conversions

How to value a store visit

If you are tracking online sales as conversions and value them as the “Revenue” generated, you can also value store visits to estimate in-store revenue. This way you can measure total revenue and return on ad spend. For more information about how to value a store visit, review About store visit conversion value or our video on How to value your store visits.

Note: You can use value rules for additional flexibility and control with store visit conversions. For example, set a higher visit value for specific campaigns promoting high priced items that sell better in store. Learn more about conversion value rules

Best practices for store visit conversion window

We recommend using a 7-day store visit conversion window for best performance and evaluation with Smart Bidding. However, for specific business models that require a longer conversion window due to longer purchase cycles (for example, auto dealerships), it's possible to keep the 30-day conversion window. Keep in mind, when using a 30-day window, it will take longer after implementation to correctly evaluate the performance of Smart Bidding with store visits. Learn more about store visit conversion window

Set up Smart Bidding for store visits in your campaigns

Follow the steps below to determine when you can use Smart Bidding for store visits and how to set up your Smart Bidding strategy.

Bid strategies supported

Smart Bidding for store visits is supported in the following campaign types and bid strategies:

Campaign type	Bid strategies
Performance Max campaigns	Maximize conversion value (with optional Target ROAS)* Maximize conversions (with optional Target CPA)
Search campaigns	Maximize conversions Maximize conversion value Target CPA Target ROAS ECPC
Shopping campaigns	Target ROAS
Video campaigns	Maximize conversions Target CPA

*Maximize conversion value (with optional Target ROAS) is recommended in Performance Max campaigns for advertisers with store visits.

Learn more on how to determine a bid strategy on your goals

1. Set your store visits conversion goal as an account-default goal (recommended)

By setting your store visits conversion goal as an account-default goal, Smart Bidding strategies that optimize for conversions in that account will start optimizing towards it. If the conversion is owned by a manager account level, that setting will apply to all campaigns using Smart Bidding in client accounts which are opted into tracking conversions under that manager account. It is recommended to set your store visits conversion goal as account-default whenever possible, since the best overall performance is achieved by optimizing for the same set of conversions across all campaigns.

Set store visits conversion goal as account-default:

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon .
2. Click the Conversions drop down in the section menu.
3. Click Summary.
4. Identify the Store visits conversion goal.
5. Click Edit goal.
6. Select Use as an account goal.
7. Click Save changes.

Keep in mind, when setting your store visits conversion goal:

• Make sure to update ROAS or CPA targets of all existing Search and Shopping conversion-based Smart Bidding campaigns when you set your store visits conversion goal at the client or manager account level, to take into account the additional conversions or conversion value from store visits.
• Smart Bidding strategies consider all conversion actions that are marked as ”Primary”. Ensure that the conversion actions you’d like to optimize toward within your Store Visits goal are marked as “Primary”.

2. Set your store visits conversion goal at the campaign level

This setting allows you to choose the conversion actions that will be reported in “Conversions” and used for bid optimization at the campaign-level. The campaign conversion setting allows you to override your account-default goals and specify which goals you’d like to track in your conversion reporting and use for bidding in a particular campaign. Using the campaign level conversion setting is recommended as an interim solution if you have existing bid strategies that optimize for conversions and would prefer to test and scale adoption of bidding to store visits throughout the account over time.

Set up campaign-level conversion setting for Search campaigns:

 

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu.
3. Click Campaigns.
4. At the top bar, select Settings.
5. Select the campaign you want to opt into store visits bidding.
6. Click the Goals drop-down menu.
7. Click Use Campaign-specific goal settings.
8. Select the Store visits conversion goal in addition to other conversion goals you would like to optimize for and click Save.

Tip: We recommend switching to the account level setting once you’re ready to set your store visits conversion goal, since optimizing for the same goals across all campaigns leads to best overall performance. If you have other biddable conversion actions (such as website purchases, calls, sign-ups), we recommend selecting these in addition to store visits conversion action to optimize for the full value driven by the campaign. Learn how to enable campaign-level conversion setting

Optimize for store visit conversions

If you want to optimize more for store visit conversions in your Search campaigns, use a value-based bid strategy and make sure store visit conversions have a higher relative value to other conversion actions. Bid strategies that optimize for conversion volume (like Target CPA or Maximize conversions) treat each conversion action with equal importance. Learn more about conversion values

Note: For Shopping ads, only value-based bidding (like Target ROAS) will take into account store visits.

Best practices for identifying and updating targets

Keep in mind that changes to conversion settings apply going forward only. When you first include store visits in "Conversions", historical values in conversion columns won't reflect the current setting. The best practice is to calculate CPA and ROAS targets manually by incorporating historical data from at least a 30-day period before the conversion delay into the following formulas:

• CPA target = cost / (all biddable conversions + store visits)
• ROAS target = (conversion value of all biddable conversions + store visits * current conversion value per store visit) * 100 / cost

For ROAS targets in Performance Max campaigns, follow the advice above for ROAS targets unless:

• You aren't using the optional ROAS target: No action is required.
• You are using the ROAS target only as a safety mechanism (your ROAS target is set higher than your achieved ROAS): Consider setting the new ROAS target also higher than the number recommended above.

Make sure to use data from at least a 30-day period before the conversion delay. For example, if your store visit conversion window and maximum online conversion delay is 30 days, set the historical period to be from 60 to 30 days ago.

Cost impact for adding conversions or conversion value to target-based Smart Bidding strategies

Adding store visits to the conversions used for bidding may cause your Target CPA and Target ROAS strategies to spend more to continue achieving your targets. To maintain stable spend, follow the above suggestions to identify and update targets. If you want to further ensure that spend is stable, you can decrease your CPA target or increase your ROAS target once you include store visits in “Conversions”.

Related links

• About campaign-specific conversion goals
• About conversion goals
• Test your bid strategies