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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.

About Search Ads 360 bid strategies

About bid strategy insights

To better understand how your bid strategies are performing, look for insights cards that appear on the bid strategies "Overview" page.

View insights about a bid strategy

  1. Navigate to a bid strategy.
    Steps for navigating to a bid strategy
    1. Navigate to an advertiser.

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

    3. Click a bid strategy name from the reporting table.

      Alternatively, you can do the following:

      1. Click the more icon at the end of the navigation bar to display navigation options.

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

      3. In the Advertiser list, click on the advertiser that contains the bid strategy.

      4. In the Bid strategy list, click on the bid strategy.

      5. Click Apply or press the Enter key.

    Search Ads 360 displays the bid strategy page.

  2. Click the Overview tab.

    If any insights are available, one or more cards will appear above the performance graph.

Types of insights

There are several kinds of bid strategy insights cards. Here's a description of each one.

Bid strategy control

Example message:
"In the selected date range, the bid strategy was not in control for 87% of the spend."
What it means:
This insights card appears if the bid strategy is not in full control of the ad spend during the selected date range. This can happen if you do any of the following:
  • Pause a bid strategy
  • Pause a campaign, ad group, or keyword
  • Manually override bids
  • Set bid constraints

Conversion delay impact

Example message:
"The selected dates are influenced by a conversion delay of about 10.2 days. 121 more conversions are expected soon."
What it means:
For many advertisers, a significant number of conversions occur after the day of click. The Search Ads 360 Smart Bidding algorithms consider this "conversion delay" effect when assessing the value of every click and the performance of the portfolio as a whole.
This insights card appears if the bid strategy is impacted by conversion delays during the selected date range.
In this example, the insights card is telling you that your conversions are delayed about 10.2 days. As a result, you can expect 121 more conversions in the near future. If your bid strategy has already generated 100 conversions, you could expect a total of 221 conversions.

Statistical noise

Example message:
"The selected dates have a high degree of statistical noise. Try a longer date range if you're analyzing performance."
What it means:
When you're assessing bid strategy performance against the target, it's important to use a date range that gives high statistical significance.
For example, if you get only a few conversions per day, you should expect low statistical significance when measuring performance over a 5-day period. Conversely, you should expect much higher statistical significance when measuring performance over a 14-day period.
This insights card appears if the dates you've selected are influenced by a high degree of natural variance (and not bidding quality).

Recommended date range

Example message:
"We recommend a different date range if you're analyzing bid strategy performance."
What it means:
When you’re assessing bid strategy performance, it's important to use a date range that has high statistical significance and is not too heavily influenced by conversion delays, health issues, or manual intervention.
This insights card appears if you've selected a date range that is not optimal for analysis. To view a date range that is better for analysis, click the "different date range" link in the message.

Cost distribution in portfolio

Example message:
"10% of keywords are driving 72% of total cost in this bid strategy."
What it means:
This insights card tells you what percentage of the keywords in your portfolio are driving what percentage of your ad spend. The card appears when no other insights are applicable to your current view of bid strategy performance.
If a small number of keywords (for example, 5 or fewer) drive most of the conversions/cost (for example, 50% or more), the bid strategy's performance will likely be more volatile on a daily basis. In addition, day-to-day keyword performance could impact your portfolio performance dramatically.
If a large number of keywords (for example, 100 or more) drive most of the conversions/cost (for example, 50% or more), the bid strategy's performance will likely be more stable on a daily basis (even if those keywords still represent a small percentage of total keywords in the portfolio). So, the performance of a few keywords in this group probably won't have much impact on your portfolio’s entire performance.
To see your keywords sorted by cost (highest to lowest), click the View keywords button on the insights card.

 

 

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