SMART BIDDING PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE

Use Smart Bidding during seasonal events (1/3)

Smart Bidding is aware and can handle most seasonal events without adjustments. In some cases, however,
it can lead to an even better outcome when targets are adjusted to reflect your goals to take advantage of
the increase in additional traffic. Smart Bidding can also help you stay competitive during seasonal events,
leveraging real-time bidding.

What to do when you are expecting a large increase in traffic: Important:

The more volume, the better for Smart Bidding. If you only expect traffic rates to Ensure campaign budgets are
change, no action is needed. If you expect conversion rates to change drastically, or not/will not be capped so the
you’re unsure if this is the case or it’s a new campaign, check the best practices below. whole opportunity is captured.

1 Scenario: Longer trends (>3 days)

Example: Holiday Season The shift in conversion rate is gradual in these

Default action recommended:
● No immediate action required!
● Make slight adjustments to the Target CPA/ROAS
depending on the marketing goal for the season
instances and are addressed by our bid
algorithm. Also, Smart Bidding learns from how
behavior changes on a particular day of the
week in the past, so seasonality due to day of
week effects is explicitly accounted for.

22 Scenario: Short spikes (<3 days)

● If you expect a major (e.g. >30%*) change in conversion rates,

Example: Black Friday
and you have a longer conversion delay (e.g. >1 day), you may
consider the following for Search & Display campaigns:
Default action recommended:
● In most cases, no action is required as 1) Seasonality adjustments or
Smart Bidding can handle short spikes. 2) Changing your target goal.

1. Seasonality Adjustment 2. Goal Adjustment

Apply a predicted conversion rate adjustment to your Tell Smart Bidding to bid appropriately with the new goal,
campaign and Smart Bidding will consider that due to changes in conversion rate during the short spike.
adjustment for the date range selected, while trying You can change the target metric in accordance with the
to hit your target CPA/ROAS. expected change in conversion rate.

Learn more here. Example:

You expect your conversion rate to Target CPA - tCPA x 2
change from 2% to 4%.
Change targets for your Search or
Keep in mind: Display campaigns depending on Target ROAS - tROAS x ½
Available for Search and Display. your Smart Bidding strategy:

*If your campaigns are small (e.g. <30 conversions / month) and/or this type of fluctuation is normal for your campaigns,
1then Seasonality Adjustments aren't recommended. You should only use Seasonality Adjustments for short events that
expect a major change in conversion rates.
SMART BIDDING PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE

Use Smart Bidding during seasonal events (2/3)

1 The trade-off between volume + value/conversion:

Target metric
reflects margin

Less volume, More volume,

Decrease CPA Increase CPA
but more value per Increase ROAS Decrease ROAS
but less value
conversion per conversion

Recommendation
for seasonal events

When choosing a target for Smart Bidding, always keep in mind that sales events usually
have the goal to maximize volume. This means most businesses are willing to trade margin
for volume. Adjust your bidding target accordingly to get more volume!

2 How to check if we need to adjust something?

#E8EAED

Use past, comparable “Seasonal

Events” to understand how CVr
changed during the event.

Use this data to make adjustments to your target metric during an upcoming event,
if needed. If your campaign is new, look at similar campaigns in your account.

2
SMART BIDDING PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE

Use Smart Bidding during seasonal events (3/3)

3 When to adjust your targets*?

Adjustments to the target metric to Seasonal Event

support Smart Bidding in adapting with short CVr spike
to seasonal events should be made
right when the campaign’s (for new
campaigns: the account’s)
Conversion Rate (CVr) deviates
from its usual average.
Normal Campaign
typical account CVr Recommended timing Volume
for target metric changes

Ramp up:
● Increase targets when CvR starts deviating from its usual

Ramp down:
● Decrease target immediately after event ends.
● It is recommended to adjust target by 1/2 the proportion of the initial adjustment, e.g. if you
increased target by 2x you should only decrease it from the baseline by 25%.
Ex: $100 → $200 (“ramp up”) →
$75 (“ramp down”) → $100

4 What if I’m running a flighted campaign?

If you’re running a flighted campaign that will be live for 7 days or less, you should:

For Search campaigns For Display campaigns

● Use Target CPA or Target ROAS, and relax ● Use Maximize Conversions, and let
targets (e.g. start with 2X usual CPA, or ½ campaign run for at least 7 days
usual ROAS)

When using Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value, no changes are necessary!
Pro tip
Just ensure there is enough budget to capture the full opportunity.

3*If using Seasonality Adjustments, there is no need to adjust your targets, as you can inform Smart Bidding of expected
changes in your conversion rates prior to the seasonal event. Learn more here.
 Case study

Titus lifted Search ad revenues during Black Friday using

automation
Titus is a German online shop that offers skateboards, streetwear and accessories.
Founded in Münster, Germany (by Titus Dittmann) in 1978 the company is closely
linked to Europe’s history of skateboarding and is a leading retailer for skateboard
hardgoods.

Titus looked for ways to grow online shop revenues at a profitable return on ad spend
(ROAS) not only through always on campaigns but also leveraging attractive offers
during Black Friday season. Eprofessional - an agency at the forefront of automation -
worked with Titus to fully automate their Search campaigns. Using Google’s Target
ROAS Smart Bidding strategy they aimed to maximize revenues at a sustainable ROI.
Knowing that Black Friday is an important seasonal event for Titus, they decided to
keep all fully automated campaigns live during peak season, ensuring campaigns were
equipped with sufficient budgets to capture increased demand.

Titus not only achieved a revenue growth of +116% YoY, but was also able to increase
revenues by +44% during Black Friday at a stable ROAS. Client and agency were happy
with how Google’s machine learning quickly reacted to seasonal changes.

44% Revenue increase during Black

Friday

116% YoY increase in total revenue

“Automation is king.”
–
Julius Dittmann, CEO, Titus
 Case study

Rakuten Marketing lifts Magazines.com’s Black Friday

revenue 180% YoY with Smart Shopping campaigns1

Since 1999, Magazines.com has been the trusted online source for deals and
discounts on popular magazine subscriptions. Leading up to the holiday season, The
brand and its data-driven agency partner, Rakuten Marketing Agency, test Smart
Shopping campaigns for the first time.

Building on their success with Dynamic Search Ads, Rakuten Marketing Agency tested
Smart Shopping campaigns for their client Magazines.com and saw an increase in
sales at a consistent return on ad spend (ROAS).

95% YoY increase

in sales2

180% Increase in revenue between

Thanksgiving & Cyber Monday3

1 In Europe, Smart Shopping campaigns can be used with any Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) you work with. The ads will show on general search results pages and on
any other surfaces the CSS has opted in to
2 Compared the campaign’s 30-day YoY performance to its Standard Shopping campaigns
3 Brand revenue increase between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday 2018
 Case study

Havas improves search performance and saves time

after enabling auction-time bidding in Search Ads 360
Havas manages their entire search portfolio through SA360 and account teams have
consistently adopted automation best practices to help improve campaign efficiency.
Smart bidding helped to automate some day-to-day functions, but teams were still
spending large chunks of their day manually adjusting bid modifiers and trying to
figure what additional signals to feed these bid strategies. This cut into time that could
have been spent working on strategic projects and the agency welcomed any feature
that could not only improve performance but also give time back to search
practitioners.

When auction-time-bidding was released as a feature for SA360 bid strategies, Havas
jumped on the opportunity to begin testing right away. After a series of controlled tests
across a handful of accounts, agency leadership then took a scaled approach to make
sure all account teams were utilizing this feature.

120% Increase in
Conversions

58% Improvement in
Cost per Acquisition

“Havas clients have seen tremendous success since

enabling SA360 auction time bidding. On average, our
clients saw a 120% lift in conversions while cost per
conversion improved 58%. Not only has performance
skyrocketed, but our team has more time to dedicate to
strategic thinking and testing for our clients.”
–
Elizabeth Cagen, SVP Performance Media