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Doubling down on manual campaigns
More of a vent post. The more Google pushes this automated bidding the more I’m doubling down on my manual campaigns. They are taking more and more control away from the advertiser
1. Took away broad modifier
2. Not showing all search terms in search term report.
3. Global negative lists do not work properly
4. Not being able to do negative keywords to performance max. (Negative brand keywords)
5. No visibility in smart campaigns.
6. Showing close variant on exact match keywordsIf they take away manual campaigns I will just flat out stop using Google or cut the budget by 50% or more. Every new client I’ve onboarded have come from agencies that were doing automated bidding and my campaigns literally do 2-3x the volume the smart campaigns were doing with VERY little wasted spend. Oh and I have visibility on what’s actually happening!
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1 Reply
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Welcome to the club. Someone should really start a user group association to push back on the nonsense.
The partial obfuscation of search terms is unfortunately never going away, since it was done primarily for privacy purposes. I can attest that I have seen extremely sensitive PII exposed in SQRs in the old days, including literal social security numbers, people admitting to crimes, botnet activity, etc. Something had to be done.
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I hate Google and mostly agree with you, but broad match and the automated bidding strategies definitely have their place and can be really powerful. Especially with broad match using historical data and signals to serve which other keywords don’t, but I think limiting them by overlaying target audiences is the way to go there.
Especially if the accounts have a lot of historical conversion data for Google to work with the automated strats can do really well, and if it’s in an account with dozens of campaigns and hundred of ad groups with a big budget it’s very hard to stay on top of bids in a meaningful way unless it’s your only account or you use a third party tool imo.
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no way you actually haven’t found a single good use case for smart bidding in 2023 come on
1. Phrase is basically BMM now
2. There are reasons for this
3. are you using the right match types?
4. you can add negative keywords on pmax, but also don’t need to exclude brand if you’re also running text because they won’t enter the same auction
5. I agree with this one
6. beats needing 10 keywords to represent every single letter change from one to the otherif you’re happy with manual CPC for traffic then fine that’s valid, it’s basically just like running max clicks except you’re wasting a half hour every day increasing or decreasing your bids. but when you start to run campaigns meant for something a little more serious than just traffic to site, smart bidding & ATB is very very useful
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I don’t agree if you’re conversion/roas based. You’ll never have the same efficiencies at scale. If your account and budget is tiny, then that may make more sense but smart bidding and ATB is significantly better than manual.
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I’m big on the manual bidding efforts.
My clients are all B2B SaaS, where the keywords are expensive, and from having managed millions of dollars in ad spend, smart bidding works best when there is a large volume of conversions.
We’re pushing for bottom-funnel conversions (demo requests, *not* trials or email-gated content), and so conversion volume isn’t super high, monthly. My rule of thumb is a minimum of 30 non-branded conversions per month and at least 15 conversions on any individual campaign before I’d consider switching to smart bidding. I’ve seen campaigns tank — some under-serving due to low rank, some overspending due to aggressive bids — when there isn’t sufficient conversion volume. The algorithm is only as good as the data we feed it. Manual gives me better control.
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To echo a few other commenters, I usually see great success with automated bidding for campaigns with a lot of conversion volume – whether it’s on a Target CPA or a ROAS based bid strategy. For larger accounts it is a huge help and usually delivers on goals despite the issues you mentioned. For campaigns that are an exception to the above (low or no conversions, different objective, etc.) I still stick to Manual CPC for that control.
I share your complaints and the instinct to double down when Google tries to force their hand. Performance Max might be the worst case example of virtually no control or visibility into what’s going on and just trusting the automation.
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My main problem with Google’s push toward automation/AI is that you are effectively penalized for rejecting those features, ie via your Quality Score or the completely-arbitrary Optimization Score.
Suggestions and options? Great! But they’re not stopping there.
I’m sure automated bidding, responsive ads testing 15 different headlines, and stuff like that are helpful to Joe Shmoe who has no idea what he’s doing on Google Ads, but for professional marketers they make the platform a worse overall product.
PS: A good half-manual-half-automated option for manual bid lovers is to use automated rules to create your own “bid policy.”
1) Create one set of rules which runs simultaneously & applies labels for “performance groups” based on longer term conv rate data.
2) Create another set of rules which runs just after the first group and looks at recent CPA/impr share data to make bid changes to each “performance group.”
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over the last couple years, I’ve focused my efforts (and money) on SEO over PPC, but i too only run manual cpc.
Maybe I’m falling behind, but “smart” campaigns feel like It’s like handing your wallet to the auctioneer and hoping for the best.
Besides, Google will be broken up (like the phone company) in the next couple years anyway. It’s anti-competitive to be the seller and buyer at the same time.
Is that what smart campaigns are all about? If Google bids for you, they are the buyer’s agent and at the same time the seller.
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It’s basically bankrupted my service business that relied on new business. My marketing budget has tripled and leads have more than halved. No other marketing technique works for me. I’m changing careers.
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I agree with all those statements, but none of them suggest that you shouldn’t be using an automated bid strategy. That’s the ONE thing that Google has got right. And I think there’s a mountain of evidence to support that statement even just in my own accounts.
You don’t get more data in your search terms report by running manual bidding. Just can all your “smart/Pmax” campaigns if you want the data. -
What is the daily spend for the clients you’re supporting? I’ve tested into smart bidding and have seen a positive lift vs manual but acknowledge that the same tactics may not work for all budgets.
I agree 100% with the frustrations around the lack of visibility. I’ve run into this with performance max and video action campaigns on YouTube. This limits my ability to make creative optimizations, particularly on non-search channels. I am also wary of the blinds spots that exist on performance max without understanding the incrementality of each channel (i.e. pushing more spend into branded search or retargeting may look great in Google Ads but might not actually drive any incremental actions).
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100%. Every automated suggestion I’ve taken from Google has incinerated my budget and delivered CTR’s less than 0.01%. Getting between 3% and 30% with manual techniques.
More work but worth in. In the meantime, I’m really really hoping that one of Microsoft’s goals with their 10B investment into Open AI is to integrate ChatGPT into Bing in a game-changing way and give Google some serious competition.
Google has come a long way from the “don’t be evil” days.
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We drank the Kool aid and we’re reaping the benefits. Smart bidding + RSA + broad (and by extension, consolidation). Thank me later
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That’s dumb. Spend less time bitching about the wind changing direction and more time learning how to adjust the sales. (Or at least equal time to each).
The moves google is choosing to make now would largely be forced upon advertisers anyways when Chrome finally sunsets 3rd party cookies. You won’t know
Might as well figure it out while you still have manual to keep the majority of your spend in more safely.
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