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There is no reason to manage bids manually

When it comes to bid management, let the machines do the heavy lifting, advises contributor Frederick Vallaeys. Here's why it's best to automate the tedious work humans used to do to calculate CPC.

Frederick Vallaeys on August 30, 2018 at 2:00 pm

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!

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]

Want more info on Paid Search? Check out our comprehensive PPC Guide – Nine chapters covering everything from account setup to automation and bid adjustments!

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Frederick Vallaeys

Frederick (“Fred”) Vallaeys was one of the first 500 employees at Google where he spent 10 years building AdWords and teaching advertisers how to get the most out of it as the Google AdWords Evangelist. Today he is the Cofounder of Optmyzr, an AdWords tool company focused on unique data insights, One-Click Optimizations™, advanced reporting to make account management more efficient, and Enhanced Scripts™ for AdWords. He stays up-to-speed with best practices through his work with SalesX, a search marketing agency focused on turning clicks into revenue. He is a frequent guest speaker at events where he inspires organizations to be more innovative and become better online marketers.