Determine a minimum and maximum bid

Your Search Ads 360 bid strategy goal may be important for your site, but it probably isn't the only goal you have. For example, in addition to increasing the number of car rental conversions, you may want to maintain a basic level of traffic to your site for other purposes. Or you may need to keep all CPCs below a certain amount. So you'll want to make sure that bids don't fall too low or you may see a reduction in traffic, and you don't want the bid strategy to bid above your maximum CPC amount. Although it’s not necessarily recommended, this article describes how you can set a minimum or maximum bid.

In Search Ads 360 to determine a minimum and maximum bid, you can use the filtered keyword report in the recent past. Then you can apply a multiplier to find the ideal range as a starting point.

Use a filtered keyword report to determine the minimum and maximum bid

1. View the campaign report.
2. If you haven't already, filter the reporting table so that it contains only the Floodlight activities that are in your goal:
   • Click the Columns button below the performance summary graph.
   • Below the recommended columns click on the drop down next to All Columns and click on Conversions.
   • Click Search Ads 360 conversions and select the required metric.
   • Click Apply.
3. Click the Search keywords tab under “Keywords”.
4. Add the Avg CPC column to the table:
   • Click the Columns button that appears below the performance summary graph.
   • Type Avg CPC in the search box and click on it.
   • Click Apply.
5. Remove any keywords that weren't clicked:
   • Click the Filter button that appears below the performance summary graph.
   • Type Avg CPC in the search box and click on it.
   • Select Greater than, and enter 0 (zero).
   • Click Apply.
6. Now click the Avg CPC column heading to sort the table by average CPC. For best performance, we do not recommend setting a minimum or maximum bid constraint.
   • The bid strategy's maximum bid should be about twice the highest average CPC. For example, if the highest average CPC is 5.00, set 10.00 as the bid strategy's maximum bid.

Remember that you may never see bids reaching the minimum or maximum that you set, but setting a wide range gives the bid strategy plenty of latitude to reach your goal for the portfolio as a whole.