Wondering how to choose the best Google Ads Bid Strategies for your campaigns & optimize bids? Let’s give you some of the best practices and guidelines based on over $40 Million ad spend across Search, Display, Demand Gen, PMax and YouTube/video campaigns.

Fair warning, you may find my suggestions contrary to those by Google, but remember that I am here to help you maximize your marketing performance while Google’s ultimate goal is to earn more by making you spend more.

Quickly, what are Google Ads Bid Strategies? In Google Ads, bid strategies determine how much you pay for clicks, impressions, or conversions in your campaigns. These strategies align your bidding approach with your campaign goals, such as driving website traffic, increasing sales, or boosting brand awareness. Selecting the right bid strategy can significantly impact the performance and ROI of your campaigns.

Google has a plethora of bid strategies to confuse you. Moreover, you can also choose campaign level or portfolio bid strategies. The importance of these two changes with your business objective. For a B2C business, you can use portfolio strategies across your entire gamut of campaigns or use them at product/service level but for a B2B business, the value of the lead changes based on segment, device type and multiple other factors making it difficult to provide values to leads. Thus, multiple tCPA and tROAS bid strategies are a better option.

At a higher level, bid strategies serve only four objectives. Selecting the right bid strategy depends on your campaign objectives:

• Traffic: Use Manual CPC or Maximize Clicks.
• Conversions: Opt for Target CPA, Maximize Conversions, or Enhanced CPC.
• Revenue: Choose Target ROAS or Maximize Conversion Value.
• Awareness: Use CPM or Target Impression Share.

Google Ads Bid Strategies and sub-categories across campaign types

	Bid Strategy	Bid Strategy Sub Categories	Campaign Types
Campaign Level Bid Strategies	Impression Share	Anywhere on Page Top of Results Page Absolute Top of Results Page	Search, YouTube, Video
	Clicks	Maximize Clicks Max CPC bid	Search, Display, Demand Gen, Local
	Conversions	Fully Automated Target CPA	Search, Display, Demand Gen, PMax
	Conversion Value	Fully Automated Target RoAS%	Search, Demand Gen, PMax
	Viewable Impressions / Viewable CPM		Display, YouTube, Video
	Target CPV or vCPM		YouTube, Video, Display
	tCPM		YouTube, Video, Display
Portfolio Bid Strategies	Impression Share	Anywhere on Page Top of Results Page Absolute Top of Results Page
	Clicks	Maximize Clicks Max CPC bid	Search, Display, Demand Gen, Local
	Conversions	Fully Automated Target CPA	Search, Display, Demand Gen, PMax
	Conversion Value	Fully Automated Target RoAS%	Search, Demand Gen, PMax
	tCPA	Fully Automated Target CPA with max and min CPC limit	Search
	tROAS	Fully Automated Target RoAS% with max and min CPC limit	Search

Further in this article, we will majorly discuss the various bidding strategies for different types of campaign and campaign themes for Search, Display, Lead Gen and PMax campaigns. Based on your business choices and targets along with the learning of the campaigns, you may have to use different bid strategies across different Google Ads campaigns. Over time, you may even need to switch the strategies based on campaign learning, business goals, and campaign performance.

Use the below table as a cheat sheet to choose the best bid strategies for different campaign types and themes.

Campaign Type	Campaign Theme	Bid Level	Preferred Bid Strategy (B2B)	Preferred Bid Strategy (B2C)
Search	Brand	Campaign	Impression Share – Abs Top Conversions with target CPA	Max Clicks with limits Conversion Value with target RoAS%
	Competitor	Portfolio	Impression Share for limited competitors Max Clicks for limited budget tCPA based on campaign learning after 30 days	Impression Share for limited competitors Max Clicks for limited budget tROAS based on campaign learning after 30 days
	Generic	Portfolio	Max clicks for first 14 days tCPA	Max clicks for first 14 days tROAS and use max/min CPC limits
Display	Funnel Retargeting	Campaign	tCPM or vCPM	tCPM or vCPM
	Awareness	Campaign	tCPM or vCPM	tCPM or vCPM
	Engagement	Campaign	Max Clicks with CPC bids	Max Clicks with CPC bids
	Conversion	Campaign	Conversions with target CPA	Conversion Value with target RoAS%
PMax	Any	Campaign	Conversions with target CPA	Conversion Value with target RoAS%
Lead Gen	Any	Campaign	Conversions with target CPA	Conversion Value with target RoAS%

Google also gives us an option to target existing and new customers with different target values

• Bid higher for new customers than existing customers
• Only bid for new customers

While these sound great, they kind of serve no purpose. As soon as you choose any of these, your whole bidding optimization and performance will go for a whack. Google isn’t able to differentiate well between new and existing customers. If you choose to bid only for new customers, then the expected bid value will be 10x higher than your current CPA which for any business wouldn’t make any sense. To share an example from the accounts that I handle, Our current CPA varies between  $250 to $500 depending on keyword cluster and device type. We get less than 10% duplicate leads/customers but if I choose to bid only for new customers, the expected target CPA rises to $7,500 and with that too my reach becomes so limited that I am unable to spend 10% of the regular budget on a daily basis.

Bid Optimization Strategies in Google Ads

Optimizing your bidding strategy involves tailoring it to specific business objectives. Here are common scenarios and how to approach them:

1. Low Conversion Rates

• Action: Switch to “Maximize Conversions” or “Target CPA” to let Google optimize for conversion-focused bidding.
• Example: A small e-commerce business struggling to convert traffic can use Target CPA to set a manageable acquisition cost, allowing for better ROI.

2. High Clicks but Low ROI

• Action: Shift to “Target ROAS” to focus on conversion value rather than volume.
• Example: A SaaS company generating leads but failing to convert them into high-value customers can set a ROAS target to align bidding with revenue.

3. Limited Budget but High Competition

• Action: Use “Maximize Clicks” or “Enhanced CPC” with a cap on maximum bids to control costs while maintaining visibility.
• Example: A startup targeting competitive keywords can optimize their limited ad spend for maximum exposure.

4. Focus on Brand Awareness

• Action: Implement “Target Impression Share” or “CPM” bidding.
• Example: A new product launch campaign can set a high impression share for relevant keywords to ensure top-of-mind awareness.

5. Seasonal Campaigns

• Action: Use “Maximize Conversion Value” with season-specific budgets and ROAS targets.
• Example: An online retailer during Black Friday can focus on high-value purchases using conversion value optimization.

6. Underperforming Keywords

• Action: Adjust manual bids or use “Enhanced CPC” for precise optimization.
• Example: A local service provider targeting specific cities can manually increase bids for high-performing locations.

7. Video Campaign Engagement

• Action: Opt for “CPV” bidding to focus on maximizing views and interactions.
• Example: A brand awareness video campaign for a new app launch can optimize cost-per-view for higher engagement.

8. Expanding Market Reach

• Action: Combine “Maximize Clicks” with broader targeting options and responsive search ads.
• Example: A business entering a new geographic market can focus on traffic volume to gather insights before shifting to performance-based bidding.

Decision-Making Framework

• Analyze Data: Use performance reports to identify gaps in CTR, conversions, or ROI.
• Set Goals: Define clear campaign objectives like traffic, lead generation, or revenue.
• Test Strategies: Run A/B tests with different bid strategies to measure effectiveness.
• Adjust Frequently: Monitor performance and tweak strategies as needed.

Understanding the nuances of each bid strategy and aligning them with your goals ensures efficient budget utilization and better campaign outcomes.

Optimizing bids requires huge amount of data analysis on regular basis. You also need to meld your budget, business goals, inventories and industry seasonality to this mix. Thus, sometimes bidding optimization may seem a daunting task.

Still confused which bid strategies are the best for your business and how to optimize them to maximize campaign performance?

Mindless helps businesses get the best performance out of their Google Ads account. We have helped our B2C clients achieve 20x return on ad spend and B2B clients lower CPL by 20% while improving lead quality and funnel conversion rates. We have managed over USD 60M in ad spend across Google Ads, Facebook/Instagram Ads, LinkedIn Ads and other digital marketing campaigns. If your business is facing a challenge in optimizing Google Ads or other paid media channels, then book a free consulting session with our experts and find out how we can help your business achieve new heights.

You can also mail us on sales@mindless.digital for any queries.

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About the author:

Pragun Jain is a seasoned digital marketers who has worked with over 500+ businesses ranging from billion dollar SAAS enterprises to 5-star hotel chains, restaurants and retail stores. He has managed over USD 75M in paid media spend across Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads and other digital marketing channels.

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