Compare Search Ads 360 bid strategy performance

Once you're satisfied that the bid strategy is performing as well as possible given your marketing goal, keywords, and business constraints, optionally run performance comparisons to answer the question, "Does the Search Ads 360 bid strategy perform better than other automated bid systems?"

Here are some suggested options for comparing performance:

• Create reports in Search Ads 360 that compare performance before and after after launching the Search Ads 360 bid strategy.

  This is the most straightforward comparison to set up, but the result is significantly affected by extrinsic factors, such as competitors, seasonality, and so on. In other words, this comparison may give a general idea of the relative merits of automated and manual bidding, but it's not a rigorous comparison.

• Compare similar campaigns or compare by geography:
  • Compare campaigns managed by a Search Ads 360 bid strategy to similar campaigns that are not managed by a bid strategy, or that are managed by some other bidding system.

    The comparison ensures that both types of campaigns experience the same extrinsic factors, so it's better than comparing pre-launch and post-launch performance. However, it's only effective if you have truly similar campaigns that you can compare.

Run a Search Ads 360 bid strategy experiment that compares similar geographic regions.
If you have campaigns with the same keywords and ads but are targeted to different geographic regions, you can apply a Search Ads 360 bid strategy to campaigns in one region, but not the other. When you compare performance, you can almost completely eliminate differences due to extrinsic and intrinsic factors.
This is the recommended way to compare performance if you're able to target campaigns to separate geographical regions.

Important

Test one change at a time. During a test, don’t change creatives, landing pages, campaign settings, or others. You want to minimize the number of variables that are changing during the test period. Otherwise, if you change both your bid management from manual to a Search Ads 360 bid strategy, and change your landing pages, you won’t know if the conversion volume changed because of the landing pages or due to the bid strategy optimizing your bids.

Compare pre-launch to post-launch

Create reports in Search Ads 360 that compare performance before launching the Search Ads 360 bid strategy with performance after the launch.

1. Sign in to your new Search Ads 360.
2. Click Campaigns, and filter the "campaign view for your bid strategy".
3. Select the bid strategy from the table.
4. It’s recommended to add a column for “Conversions” or Conv. Value.”
5. Add the"Conversions" or "Conv. value" column for the conversions your bid strategy is targeting.
6. Click the time-range selector that appears in the upper right corner of the page and do the following:
   • From the Time range list, select Custom. Enter a starting date that's at least 4 weeks after you launched the bid strategy, and at least 2 weeks since you've made any changes to the bid strategy's target amount. Enter an end date that's at least 2 weeks after the start date.
   • Select Compare.
   • Under “Compare,” select Custom. Enter the same length of time as the current time range. Be sure that the time range ends before you launched the bid strategy.

To view performance details for the Search Ads 360 bid strategy:

Compare similar campaigns or compare by geography

Compare similar campaigns

Compare campaigns managed by a Search Ads 360 bid strategy to similar campaigns that are not managed by a bid strategy or that are managed by some other bidding system. For example, apply a bid strategy to 10 campaigns that advertise formal shoes, and compare performance to 10 campaigns that advertise similar casual shoes.

Compare by geography

If you have campaigns with the same keywords and ads but are targeted to different geographic regions, you can apply a Search Ads 360 bid strategy to campaigns in one region, but not the other.

For example, consider a company that sells bicycles and bicycle parts across the US. If the company has separate campaigns for each state in the US, the company can do the following:

Requirements

To ensure an accurate comparison, wait until you've met all of the following requirements:

Compare campaigns

Note: ROI bid strategies optimize towards the conversions and conv. value columns.

1. Sign in to your new Search Ads 360.
2. Navigate to a sub-manager account.
3. From the page menu, click Bid strategies.
4. Click the name of the bid strategy in the Bid strategy column.
   • You may also select a “Time range” above the “Strategy status” card.
5. The table displayed will show performance history over time.
   • You may also use the drop-down arrows within the table to select 2 criteria to compare and display in the table
   1. Put the campaigns for New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania in a bid strategy.
   2. Keep manual bidding for the Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts campaigns.
   3. Compare performance for the two sets of campaigns. Note that if the two regions historically perform at different rates, for example, an average of 15% more conversions in the more heavily populated region, the company needs to determine the proportional difference and apply the proportion to the comparison.
   • Wait 6 weeks after launching the Search Ads 360 bid strategy, and 4 weeks after making any significant changes to the target. If you haven't made any changes since launching, you can run the comparison 6 weeks after launching. If you changed the target 3 weeks after launch, you can run the comparison 7 weeks after launch.
   • Conversion history: Minimum of 3 weeks of conversion data.
   • Conversion volume: Recommended 20 conversions per week for the entire bid strategy portfolio.
   • Click volume: Recommended 10,000 total clicks for the campaigns in the bid strategy and 10,000 total clicks for the campaigns that are not in the bid strategy.
   • ROI targets: For bid strategies with CPA or ROAS targets, make sure the campaigns in the strategy are achieving within 10% of targets.
   • Constraints: Make sure the bid strategy is not constrained by minimum or maximum bid limits or campaign budgets.

Compare campaigns

1. Identify clear evaluation criteria for comparison.
   For example, the number of conversions at the same CPA.
2. Navigate to the client account and click the Campaigns tab.
3. If you're comparing conversions or revenue, You can use the Conversions and the Conv. value columns, to report your performance for bid strategies. Add your reporting columns to the campaign table that contains the conversions your bid strategy is targeting.
4. Click the time-range selector that appears in the upper right corner of the page and select a timeline that meets the suggested requirements.
5. Use a filter to display only the campaigns that are in your bid strategy.
6. Make a note of the metrics you'll use for your comparison.
7. Clear the filter. Then create another filter that displays the similar campaigns that aren’t managed by the bid strategy. Make a note of the same metrics that you recorded for bid strategy and compare the results.

Note: ROI bid strategies optimize towards the conversions and conv. value columns.