Self-serve PPC ads on online platforms are easy to set up, which is why many small businesses use them to promote their goods and services. However, this ease of use can cause as many problems as it solves. Many marketers struggle to create ad campaigns that are affordable and effective. These ad systems have so many options; it’s easy to create an ad set that is poorly optimized for a particular goal. Google Ads has introduced a new bidding strategy that will let advertisers optimize for conversion value when using enhanced CPC. 

Last week, Google Ads users began to notice a new option for manual CPC settings. When using the enhanced CPC option, besides being able to optimize for conversions, users can also choose to optimize for conversion value. Google still recommends that users utilize the Smart Bidding options to get the most clicks, but manually setting the strategy has some advantages. 

By allowing advertisers to optimize for conversion value,  Google makes it possible for businesses to choose what matters most to them in an ad campaign. This can be as simple as steering the campaign toward high-ticket items or assigning a value to an action. For example, it can be set it so that getting people to call the business has a higher value than clicks to the website. Since the company decides the conversion value, they have more control over the direction of the ad campaign. 

Much of the action in a PPC ad campaign is hidden from the advertiser. Google Ads and similar platforms are doing billions of calculations every second to determine which ads are shown across the internet. Relying on the Smart Bidding options can result in good looking metrics, such as a large number of clicks to the website, but high metrics don’t always equal better profits. Google has an optimize for conversion value option for Smart Bidding campaigns that launched last month. Now that feature has been extended to the manual bidding strategies.

The enhanced CPC options help advertisers get the results they want, even if it leads to lower numbers in other areas. The rollout of the optimize for conversion value option makes it easier for businesses to define the results they want. 

Despite being manual, the optimize for conversion value option with enhanced CPC is a simplified version of the Smart Bidding option. For example, it doesn’t have a goal of spending your daily budget. Similarly, it lacks the option for advertisers to set a target return on ad spend. What it does is raise your maximum CPC bids for clicks deemed more likely to lead to higher conversion value when you choose that option.

Choosing conversion value over conversions makes the most sense when a business has a broad range of potential conversion targets. Many companies have services and products that cost varying amounts of money. If your bidding strategy treats all conversions as equal, you could end up with a lot of low-value conversions at the expense of more valuable actions. It would be like an office supply store that has an online ad that sells a lot of pencils but no computers. 

It may take more work, but it’s probably worth the effort to switch to the optimize for conversion value strategy, whether you’re using Smart Bidding or Enhanced CPC.

For more recent news about changes and updates to Google, read this article on the new link attributes that Google introduced to compliment the nofollow attribute.