This article describes how Search Ads 360 bid strategies learn and adapt to help you meet your performance goals. When you launch a new strategy or make significant changes to your bid strategy, the bid strategy requires time to adjust bids to achieve optimal performance. We recommend waiting 2-3 conversion delay cycles for performance to stabilize before you evaluate the impact of these changes.
On this page
- How bid strategy learning works?
- What types of changes trigger learning status?
- Initial Learning: What to Expect
- FAQs
How bid strategy learning works?
Search Ads 360 bid strategies function as an always-on optimization engine designed to maximize performance. By analyzing extensive historical data, conversion rates, and performance trends, the system identifies the effective bidding range to achieve your goals. Because this is a data-driven process, the strategy may require a learning period to gather new performance data and reconfigure its optimizations after you make significant changes.
What types of changes can trigger a learning status?
Some changes in your account may cause Search Ads 360 bid strategies to display a learning status. During this phase, you may experience performance fluctuations and need to allow the system time to reach the optimal bid level for your goal. A learning status may be displayed following these typical changes:
- New bid strategy: The strategy was recently created or reactivated, and bidding is adjusting to optimize bids.
- Composition change (Campaign membership changes): Campaigns, ad groups, or keywords have been added to or removed from the bid strategy.
- Setting and target changes: Changes to bid strategy settings, such as enabling auction time bidding, or making significant changes to your target CPA or target ROAS bidding strategies.
While certain changes, such as conversion goal updates or minor target adjustments, may not trigger a learning status, they may still impact performance and cause fluctuations. It is important to allow the bid strategy sufficient time to gather data and optimize after any change.
To ensure effective and consistent learning, sufficient historical data is required. Bid strategies with a low volume of conversions or less conversion data may underperform.
Initial learning: What to expect
After creating a new bid strategy or modifying an existing one, performance may not immediately reach the bid strategy target as the system adjusts to optimize your bids. During this time particularly after significant changes to targets or conversion goals you may experience temporary performance fluctuations
For Target CPA or Target ROAS strategies, it is recommended to wait for 2 to 3 conversion delay cycles before you assess performance. This allows the strategy time to stabilize and incorporate the conversion data it needs to perform consistently.
For a smooth learning transition follow these:
- Avoid making manual changes immediately after you launch a new bid strategy. Bid strategies usually take several conversion cycles to achieve their target.
- Allow for the conversion delay period to pass before analyzing performance.
- All bid strategy management should be done on the Search Ads 360 interface.
FAQs
1. How long should I wait before assessing a new bid strategy?
It is recommended to wait 2-3 conversion delay cycles before assessing the performance of Target CPA or Target ROAS strategies. This allows the strategy sufficient time to stabilize and fully incorporate conversion data to reach its goal.
2. What performance changes should I expect during initial learning?
Bid strategies constantly learn to optimize performance. After bid strategy creation, or a major setting or target change, the system gathers data to find the best bidding range for your campaigns. You may experience initial fluctuations in spend and performance metrics, whilst the system finds the optimal bid.
3. What is the recommended limit for target changes?
While there is no set limit, large target changes may increase performance volatility and result in larger spend fluctuations. To reduce fluctuations, we recommend adjusting the target gradually over several iterations. Wait for at least 2-3 conversion delay cycles for each adjustment until the desired goal is reached.
4. Should I use bid constraints with a bid strategy?
We recommend against applying bid constraints with a bid strategy, as they can negatively impact bid efficiency and conversion rates. Bid constraints can be a beneficial tool for stabilizing performance and reducing fluctuations if a bid strategy experiences unusual volatility. This is particularly relevant after significant setting changes, when the strategy requires time to gather additional data. For optimal performance, it is recommended to remove these constraints when the bid strategy has achieved stability.
5. Can I make target adjustments or manually change keyword or ad group Max CPC during a strategy's learning period?
You can make target adjustments as needed to manage spend and performance. We recommend keeping target changes to a minimum during the initial learning period to give the bid strategy time to learn (2-3 conversion cycle period) and give you time to assess the data.
For auction-time bidding enabled bid strategies, manual keyword or ad group Max CPC changes will be ignored.