In addition to automatically setting base bids for biddable items, Search Ads 360 bid and budget bid strategies using intraday bidding can also set bids to target devices, audience or remarketing lists and locations. The bids for these items are called bid adjustments (or bid modifiers) because the bids are a percentage increase or decrease of a base bid.
Bid adjustments increase or decrease bids depending on the device that a customer searches from, membership in an audience (remarketing list) or location. Client accounts vary in the scenarios and bid adjustments they support.
You can set up a Search Ads 360 conversion or value-based bid or budget bid strategy to automatically optimise the bid adjustments that are available in some client accounts.
Search Ads 360 bid adjustments can be applied to the following campaign types:
- Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Yahoo! JAPAN Ads and Baidu Search campaigns
- Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising Shopping campaigns
- Google Ads Performance Max campaign
- Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising and Yahoo! JAPAN Ads Dynamic Search Ad campaigns
The following are the available Search Ads 360 bid and budget strategies:
- Search Ads 360 bid strategies
- Search Ads 360 budget bid strategies
- Maximise clicks
- Maximise conversions
- Maximise conversion value
Some client accounts such as Microsoft Advertising can increase or decrease the bid for specific types of devices, such as mobile, or specific types of targets, such as audience (remarketing) lists.
For campaigns that use Google Ads auction-time bidding, bid strategies help improve performance by using real-time contextual signals, such as time and location, to set each keyword bid. Note that auction-time bids and bid adjustments can’t be manually overwritten in Search Ads 360 or Google Ads. For campaigns that don’t use Google Ads auction-time bidding, bid strategies can find the optimal bid adjustment or campaign budget and bid adjustment for your ROI goals because they use the same historical performance data to set the base bid and to adjust the bids for specific types of devices and targets.
Bid adjustment options in bid and budget strategies
The bid adjustment options are available in the 'Locations', 'Ad schedule', 'Devices', 'Audiences' or 'Advanced bid adj.' sections of the page menu. The bid adjustments you select will be used only in the client accounts that don’t use Google Ads auction-time bidding as described in the table below.
| Bid adjustment option | Applies to client accounts that don’t use Google Ads auction-time bidding | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Device |
Google Ads* Microsoft Advertising Yahoo! JAPAN Ads |
Automatically sets optimal bid adjustments for desktop, mobile and tablet devices. Learn more about device bid adjustments. |
| Remarketing or audience |
Google Ads Microsoft Advertising |
Automatically sets optimal bid adjustments for Google Ads audience (remarketing) targets and Microsoft Advertising audience (remarketing) targets. |
| Location target bid adjustments | Google Ads |
Automatically sets optimal bid adjustments for Google Ads geographic location targets. Learn more about location target bid adjustments. |
*Note that campaigns using Google Ads auction-time bidding can also use device bid adjustments with target CPA bidding.
Changing the settings
You can edit the bid adjustment settings in a bid strategy or budget bid strategy. For example, if you start with a bid strategy that only sets device bid adjustments, you can change the bid strategy later to also set location target bid adjustments. Likewise, if you start with a bid strategy that automatically sets all the bid adjustments, you can change the bid strategy so it doesn’t set any of the bid adjustments.