Evaluate the performance of your bid strategy

Evaluating the success of a Search Ads 360 bid strategy typically involves answering 2 broad questions:

• Is performance better than manual bidding (or other automated bidding systems)?
• Could you get better results with different settings (higher CPA, wider min/max bid range)?

While you may be tempted to start your evaluation by comparing a bid strategy's performance to manual bidding, it's best to start by understanding how your current settings affect performance, make adjustments if necessary and wait for the adjustments to take effect. Otherwise, you're not really giving bid strategies a fair chance.

The budget bid strategies in Search Ads 360 learn and optimise the ads as they perform. It is advised that you create the budget bid strategies 2–3 days in advance of the launch of your campaign. The bid strategies require a minimum of 3–4 weeks of spend data in order to show optimal results.

So be prepared that a realistic evaluation of bid strategy performance requires at least several weeks.

Recommended timeline

Here's an overview of the timeline and recommended steps to take when evaluating a bid strategy:

Week 1	Do nothing in the first week after you launch a Search Ads 360 bid strategy. During the first 2 weeks, Search Ads 360 needs time to observe performance, adjust bids and respond to those adjustments. In addition, if the bid strategy contains new keywords without performance history, Search Ads 360 will engage in startup learning behaviour for those keywords.
Week 2	Check if the bid strategy constraints you specified (such as minimum and maximum bids) are slowing optimisation. Adjust the constraints if your business goals allow. Avoid changing the target amount (such as the CPA amount) at this time. Just address any issues that arise from constraints.
Week 4	Use Search Ads 360 reports and bid strategy forecasts to answer the question, 'Could I get better results with different settings or keywords'? Make small adjustments to your target amounts, if needed. Check the forecast again after a few days. Continue making small changes once every week or two until you've reached your ideal balance of cost and conversions. Learn more about Forecasting the results of your performance plan.

When you find that the Search Ads 360 bid strategy is performing well and is compatible with your marketing goal, keywords and business constraints, you can continue with the same strategy and also use it for similar campaigns in the future. Alternatively, you can run experiments to understand which bid strategy works better for your campaign.

Note: Significant changes (greater than 30%) made to a campaign using intraday bidding may cause the bid strategy to revert to the learning period. During the learning period, the bid strategies adjust to the new changes which can impact the campaign performance.

How automated bidding helps improve performance

Automated bidding can be a simple and powerful solution to the often complex challenge of finding the right bid for each auction. It may be a useful addition to your account as well. Changing the bid strategy settings manually may cause performance fluctuations as the bid strategy adjusts to the new settings.

To get started, decide which strategy is right for your business and then test it out. If it’s working correctly, you’ll see better results while saving hours and days of management time in the long run.

The final goal, of course, is driving the clicks, conversions, revenue and profit that you want at the price that makes the most sense for your business.