Bid management is not traditionally thought to be part of a marketing job so why do so many search marketers manage a handful of bids? How did bid management creep into the job description?
I believe the task rose out of necessity because when pay-per-click (PPC) took off in the early 2000s, ad platforms spoke a different language than their advertisers. Where AdWords (now Google Ads) wanted advertisers to set a maximum cost per click (CPC), the companies advertisers represented were more concerned with driving visibility, making sales and getting leads. These were things better defined through a target rank, cost per acquisition (CPA) or return on advertising spend (ROAS).
To bridge the disconnect, the people managing the accounts had to do the math to convert business goals into the type of bids Google needed. And that’s why managing bids became a core part of search marketing.
Fast forward 18 years and I feel it’s time to stop managing bids manually. In this post, I’ll cover the easiest automated bidding options to start with and in part 2, I’ll cover the most common automation pitfalls to avoid.
The rise of automated bidding
Where once bid management was as simple as setting a maximum CPC, things got more complex over time as Google introduced new levers for bid adjustments to control bids for dayparting, geographic locations, devices, demographics and now, custom audiences. With that many possible adjustments, a single keyword alone could need upwards of 10,000 bids to account for every possible scenario!
Want more info on Paid Search? Check out our comprehensive PPC Guide – Nine chapters covering everything from account setup to automation and bid adjustments!
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