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Beginning September 25, 2019, advanced targeting is no longer available when creating a new bid strategy. Existing bid strategies with advanced targeting are not affected by this change.

An advanced targeting bid strategy addresses the needs of companies that offer a complex mix of products with varying profit margins. In particular, this technology was designed with retail, travel, and financial services in mind. However, the functionality is fully flexible and can be used in any industry.

The advanced targeting goal optimizes bidding based on the type of conversion. You can set a Cost per action (CPA), Effective revenue share (ERS), or Return on advertiser spend (ROAS) target for a customized group of conversions. For example, you can assign aggressive targets to higher-margin conversion types, and assign conservative goals to lower-margin conversion types.

Search Ads 360 weights the selected conversions according to their CPA/ERS/ROAS values to determine the true CPA/ERS/ROAS of each keyword in the bid strategy. This allows the biddable item to be evaluated properly on performance. Is it performing accurately against the CPA/ERS/ROAS goal, is it overperforming, or is it underperforming? Once this has been determined, the Search Ads 360 properly adjusts bidding to achieve its overall goal.

Overview

Here's an overview of creating a Search Ads 360 bid strategy with an advanced targeting goal (the details come later this guide):

1. Open the Search Ads 360 bid strategy editor and select the advanced targeting goal.
2. Decide if you want the bid strategy to set bids, and set or recommend bid adjustments for mobile devices, remarketing targets, and location targets. 
   Optimizing bids is required in bid strategies with the advanced targeting goal. (Optimizing bids is optional for bid strategies with conversions or revenue goals.)
3. Set up one or more CPA, ERS, or ROAS target, and select Floodlight or Google Analytics conversions to optimize for each target.
   Targeting conversions or revenue adjusted by a formula column is not available in advanced targeting bid strategies.
4. Specify required and optional constraints. The constraints apply to all targets in the bid strategy.

Need an overview of bid strategies in general? Take a look at the Introduction to bid strategies.

Ready to get started?

1. Navigate to an advertiser.

   Steps for navigating to an advertiser

   1. Click the navigation bar to display navigation options.

   2. In the "Agency" list, click on the agency that contains the advertiser. You can search for an agency by name or scroll through the list.

   3. In the "Advertiser" list, click on the advertiser.

   4. Click Apply or press the Enter key.

   Search Ads 360 displays the advertiser page, which contains data for all of the advertiser’s engine accounts.

2. In the left navigation panel, click Bid strategies.

3. Click + Bid strategy, which appears above the reporting table.

The bid strategy editor appears and displays the Goals section.