Campaigns using Smart Bidding set bids based on the most accurate conversion measurements available. However, when monitoring the performance and delivery of campaigns using Smart Bidding, or as your business goals evolve, you may want to make adjustments to budgets and Smart Bidding CPA (Cost per action) or ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend) targets to help you achieve your goals.
For example: If you would like to increase spend, you can raise CPA targets or lower ROAS targets as needed. Setting a CPA target that is too low, may cause you to forgo clicks that could result in conversions, resulting in fewer total conversions. Or, if you need to focus on efficiency, you can lower CPA targets or increase ROAS targets as needed.
Using simulations to help set optimal targets
As your business goals evolve, your next step could be to adjust your targets to meet your changing marketing objectives. To do this, you can use Target CPA and Target ROAS simulators. Simulators help you understand the number of conversions your ads might have received if you had set different CPA or ROAS targets.
You can use simulators to identify incremental conversion opportunities, and adjust your targets as you scale your usage of Target CPA and Target ROAS bidding. You can also visit the Recommendations page to find opportunities to adjust your targets. Recommendations will use simulation data to identify opportunities where you may be able to get more conversions by adjusting your CPA targets, or more conversion value by adjusting your ROAS targets.
Target changes performance impact
Frequent or large target changes won’t negatively impact the performance of your bid strategy, and you don’t need to worry about a strategy resetting what it’s already learned about your account after changing your target. Smart Bidding is always learning from new data in the auction or your account, and can perform well with rapid target changes. However, it’s important to note that a major change in targets can have a similarly sized impact on spend or volume.
Conversion delay
Smart Bidding reacts to target changes quickly, and will start optimizing to your new goal within minutes.
Keep in mind that after a target change, it can take 1-2 conversion cycles to achieve the new target because of the delay in conversions. “Conversion cycle” is defined as the typical time it takes for a click to convert. If the majority of clicks yield conversions within 7 days, it’s expected that CPA or ROAS targets will adjust to changes in conversion rate within about 7 days.
Because of this, it’s recommended to wait 1-2 cycles before assessing performance. For most advertisers, these conversion cycles are typically short.
