Intro Just like YouTube Ads shouldn’t defacto be run by your Google Ads agency (unless they know what they’re doing), it’s equally wrong to classify branded and non-brand keywords as the same. Just because they’re both within a Google Ads account does not mean they should be treated the same. In this article, I explain […]

Smart Bidding has been a staple in the way we run campaigns since 2020. When I was first asked to update my 2018 article on Smart Bidding, I found it said that we weren’t very optimistic about it. Flash forward to 2024, and our internal directive since 2020 has been: “By default, Smart Bidding must

Summary There are actions you can take to significantly improve Smart Bidding Don’t try to outsmart Smart Bidding—it’s better at math than you are Work with the ROAS targets and the available budget Use the features available, including Portfolio bid strategies, Seasonality Adjustments, and Data Exclusion Try not having a target Always give it time

Summary If everyone is using Smart Bidding, the advertiser that provides the best data will gain an edge in the auction. Micro conversions can be a way to give more data in cases where you don’t get enough transactions to fuel Smart Bidding. Attribution is fundamentally flawed, so adding more conversions to Google isn’t an issue. Start simple with

Much has been written about automated bid management in the last few years, but it seems little is written about managing your bids manually. At least not much that’s new information. So, in this article, I will talk in-depth about how to manually manage bids. It’s one of those parts of PPC management that I

Summary: Automated bidding strategies have overtaken manual bidding as the most efficient way to bid Smart Bidding from Google is better than 3rd party bidding software due to the number of bidding signals it has access to (and the core algorithm is good) Using automated bidding is not an excuse to abdicate responsibility for bidding