1. Manual CPC Bidding
Manual CPC Bidding gives you more control over your bidding strategy. But, more control means more time spent monitoring costs and adjusting on your own.
If you aren’t well versed in Google Ads yet, this strategy isn’t your best bet.
Manual CPC is where you set bids for different ad groups or placements on your own. If specific campaigns are more profitable than others, you can quickly adjust budgets to add money or remove from other campaigns.
You can also combine Manual CPC bidding with ECPC bidding:
2. Enhanced Cost Per Click (ECPC)
Using Smart Bidding, Google has the right to increase or decrease your bid amount based on the likelihood of driving the sale. Bids will try to be averaged out at your max cost per click settings.
If a search is too competitive and CPCs are outrageously high, Google can lower your bid to cost less due to decreased chances of converting.
If it’s an easy steal by increasing bids, Google will make the call.
This type of bidding is restricted to the Search and Display networks.
Using the maximum daily budget that you set, Google will automatically run your bidding for you to get you the most conversions for your money.
4. Maximize Clicks
5. Target Search Page Location
3. Maximize Conversions
Using the maximum daily budget that you set, Google will automatically run your bidding for you to get you the most conversions for your money.
4. Maximize Clicks
Maximize Clicks is an automatic bidding strategy based on your maximum daily budget.
Google Ads will attempt to drive the most clicks possible with your daily budget.
5. Target Search Page Location
TSPL (Target Search Page Location) bidding is the strategy of letting Google automatically adjust your bids to always show your ads either:
- On the first page results of Google
- At the top of the first page of Google (1-4)
6. Target Outranking Share
Target Outranking Share is another automated bidding tactic that’s perfect for competitor targeting on Google Ads.
You can choose a specific website or competitor that you want to outrank.
When your ads and your competitor’s ads are both displaying, Google will increase your bids to outrank their ads.
Google also will show your ads when your competitor isn’t showing up to give you better brand awareness.
7. Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
Target CPA bidding is a bidding strategy you can use if you want to optimize conversions. If driving conversions are your primary goal for the campaign, selecting Target CPA bidding will focus on trying to convert users at a specific acquisition cost.
With this method, Google Ads will automatically set your bids on each campaign based on your CPA. While some conversions may cost more, others may cost less to even out and align with your acquisition costs.
Target ROAS is the bidding strategy where Google Ads will set your bids to maximize conversion value based on the return you want from your ad spend. This number is percentage based.
On your next Google Ads campaign, you want to generate $10 for every $2 spent. To do the math, you follow this formula:
Sales ÷ ad spend x 100% = Target ROAS
9. CPM Bidding (Cost Per Thousand Impressions)
Cost per Thousand Impressions, otherwise known as CPM, is bidding solely based on impressions.
This option is reserved for the Display Network and YouTube campaigns like TrueView and is not for use on the Search Network (for obvious reasons).
10. vCPM Bidding (Cost Per Viewable Thousand Impressions)
vCPM bidding is a tactic of manual bidding best reserved for brand awareness campaigns.
Again, like CPM bidding, it is reserved for the Display Network.
This bidding type is setting your maximum costs on a viewable 1,000 impressions.
11. CPV Bidding (Cost Per View)
Cost-per-view bidding is strictly reserved for video advertising on Google Ads, and can be used on the TrueView video platform. Using CPV bidding, you pay for video views or interactions.
Interactions on the TrueView platform could be any of the following:
- Call to action clicks
- Overlay clicks
- Cards
- Companion banners
A “view” is determined by how long someone watches your video ad for, otherwise known as the duration. In this case, with CPV bidding, a view is counted when someone watches 30 seconds of your ad, or whenever they decide to engage!
12. Target Impression Share Bidding
Target Impression Share is a new bidding strategy released in late 2018 by Google Ads.
This smart bidding strategy is focused on brand awareness and helping you reach as many people as possible.
As an example, if you are looking to dominate impressions for specific keyword searches, like basketball shoes, you can ensure your ads show up 100% of the time on SERPs by selecting 100% as your target impression share:
