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Welcome to the help center for Search Ads 360, a platform for managing search marketing campaigns.  While the help center is available to the public, access to the Search Ads 360 product is available only to subscribing customers who are signed in. To subscribe or find out more, contact our sales team.

Create a specific type of bid strategy

Define targets

In the Target section of the Search Ads 360 bid strategy editor:

  1. Select CPA and enter a target amount.

  2. Select conversions to optimize.

  3. Optional. If you selected Floodlight conversions, choose whether to use the default last-click attribution model or select a different attribution model. All other conversion sources can only use the last-click attribution model.
  4. For Floodlight conversions, the "Cross-environment conversions" check box is selected by default to enable bid strategies to consider conversions from other devices such as mobile phones and tablets when setting the default bid and setting or recommending bid adjustments. 
    The check box is not available with other conversion sources, such as Google Analytics.
  5. Click Next.

Why isn't the Monthly spend option available?

Monthly spend bid strategies that target conversions or revenue have been replaced by budget bid strategies that can optimize monthly budgets for groups of campaigns.

CPA target

Cost per action (CPA) is calculated as follows:

  • CPA = spend ÷ (number of actions)

If you specify a CPA target, Search Ads 360 will raise or lower bids to maximize conversions on the items in your portfolio while achieving a CPA that’s as close as possible to the target CPA. That is, over a time period, Search Ads 360 will strive to achieve an average cost per action that meets the target CPA while keeping the portfolio as a whole profitable.

In some cases, this can result in a CPA for an individual keyword that is more than the target CPA, making that keyword unprofitable. To instruct Search Ads 360 to try to keep the CPA in the profitable range for all individual keywords, you can set a max CPA constraint in the next section of the bid strategy editor.

Available conversions

You can select from the following types of conversions for a number of conversions bid strategy to maximize:

  • Floodlight:
    • All actions: Maximizes the number of non-revenue conversions that are tracked by all action Floodlight activities on your site, such as signing up for a newsletter or requesting a catalog.
    • All transactions: Maximizes the number of sales transactions that are tracked by all transaction Floodlight activities on your site. Note that a conversions bid strategy maximizes the number of transactions, not the amount of revenue or the quantity of items sold. If you want to maximize the amount of revenue, create a bid strategy with a revenue goal.
    • Selected conversions. Maximizes the number of specific activities that you select. For example, you can select a single transaction activity, a single action (non-revenue) activity, or any number and combination of activities.
  • Google Analytics:
    • All goals: Maximizes the number of all goal completions on your site.
    • All transactions: Maximizes the number of all ecommerce transactions on your site. Note that a conversions bid strategy maximizes the number of transactions, not the amount of revenue or the quantity of items sold. If you want to maximize the amount of revenue, create a bid strategy with a revenue goal.
    • Selected conversions. Maximizes the number of specific goals that you select.
  • Google Ads: Maximizes the number of conversions in Google Ads campaigns using one or more of the selected Google Ads conversion trackers from your site. 
  • Search Ads 360 formula columns: Maximizes the number of conversions as defined by a formula column. For example, you can use a formula column that sums the number of all Floodlight and Google Analytics conversions. A bid strategy with a conversions goal can't use a formula column that calculates revenue or number of clicks.
  • Floodlight activity columnsGoogle Analytics columns, or Google Ads conversion tracking columns: Also referred to as custom columns. 

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