Blog Post

12 Google Ads Bidding Strategies to Utilize for Your Next Campaign

Sim Wan Yong • August 12, 2019

Google uses machine learning and AI to power your business ads - we all know that. This is why Google Ads has plenty of options available when it comes to bidding strategies.


Everyone starts with the manual cost-per-click (manual CPC), in which we manually set our maximum bid for each keyword and ad groups separately, without the aid of Google's machine learning to help us automatically adjust the bids as needed.

However, there are actually several other useful bidding strategies that you can utilize to further improve your campaign performance.

Here, we're going to review 12 Google Ads bidding strategies - what they mean, how they impact your campaign and so on. Let's get started!

12 Google Ads Bidding Strategies You Should Know About

Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM) Bidding)

Suitable for the following goals:
  • Brand awareness
  • Increasing audience reach
Perfect for:
  • Display campaigns
  • Display remarketing campaigns
How you're Charged:
  • You're charged your bidding amount every time your display ad reaches 1000 impressions
  • Your ad has one impression when your display ad is shown to user, regardless of whether or not the users click on them.

Cost per Viewable Thousand Impressions (vCPM) Bidding

Suitable for the following goals:
  • Brand awareness
  • Increasing audience reach
Perfect for:
  • Display campaigns
  • Display remarketing campaigns.
How you're Charged:
  • You're charged your bidding amount every time your display ad reaches 1000 viewable impressions
  • Your ad has one viewable impression when at least 50% of your display ad is shown on the user's screen for one second or longer for display ads, and two seconds or longer for video ads. The charges apply regardless of whether or not the users click on them.

Cost per View (CPV) Bidding

Suitable for the following goals:
  • Brand awareness
  • Increasing audience reach
  • Increasing video views
  • Increasing brand or product consideration
Perfect for:
  • YouTube TrueView video campaigns
  • YouTube TrueView video remarketing campaigns.
How you're Charged:
  • You're charged up to your bidding amount every time someone views 30 seconds of your ad or when they interact with it, either by clicking on your call-to-action overlay, cards or companion banners.

Manual Cost-per-click (CPC) Bidding

Suitable for the following goals:
  • Product/ Services consideration
  • Driving website traffic
  • Increasing clicks into landing page
Perfect for:
  • Google Search Ads
  • Google Search / Display Remarketing
How you're Charged:
  • You're charged up to your bidding amount for your keywords, ad groups or placements every time someone clicks on your ad.
  • This option can be adapted into Enhanced CPC (eCPC) with just a click.

Enhanced Cost-per-click (eCPC) Bidding

Suitable for the following goals:
  • Product/ Services consideration
  • Driving website traffic
  • Increasing clicks into landing page
  • Optimizing search for conversions
Perfect for:
  • Google Search Ads
  • Google Display Ads
  • Google Search / Display Remarketing
How you're Charged:
  • You're charged a little above or below the bidding amount for your keywords, ad groups or placements every time someone clicks on your ad.
  • Google will automatically increase or decrease your bids to show your ad either on the first page of the search results, or the top of the page of the search results.

Maximize Clicks

Suitable for the following goals:
  • Driving website traffic
  • Increasing clicks into landing page
Perfect for:
  • Google Search Ads
  • Google Display Ads
  • Google Search / Display Remarketing
How you're Charged:
  • You're charged a little above or below your bidding amount for your keywords, ad groups or placements every time someone clicks on your ad.
  • Google will automatically increase or decrease your bids according to how likely you'll get a click from the ad impression.
  • This bidding strategy focuses more on bringing people into the landing page without much regards to how likely you'll get a conversion from it.

Target Search Page Location

Suitable for the following goals:
  • Competitor targeting
  • Driving website traffic
  • Increasing clicks into landing page
Perfect for:
  • Google Search Ads
  • Google Search Remarketing
How you're Charged:
  • You're charged a little above or below the bidding amount for your keywords, ad groups or placements every time someone clicks on your ad.
  • Google will automatically increase or decrease your bids according to
  • This bidding strategy focuses more on bringing people into the landing page without much regards to how likely you'll get a conversion from it.

Target Outranking Share

Suitable for the following goals:
  • Competitor targeting
  • Driving website traffic
  • Increasing clicks into landing page
Perfect for:
  • Google Search Ads
  • Google Search Remarketing
How you're Charged:
  • You're charged based on the target outranking share percentage that you would like to pitch against your competitor's domain.
  • Google will automatically increase your bids according to the percentage you provided. If you set your target outranking share to 80%, Google will adjust the bids for your keywords, ad groups, placements et cetera to ensure that your ad will rank higher than your competitor's 80% of the time.

Target Impression Share Bidding

Suitable for the following goals:
  • Brand awareness
  • Increasing audience reach
  • Competitor targeting
Perfect for:
  • Google Search Ads
  • Google Search Remarketing
How you're Charged:
  • You're charged based on the ad position on the search result page that you would like to appear in for your keywords.
  • Google will automatically increase your bids based on the impression share you want to achieve for your ads, along with the position that you want to bid for.
  • With this portfolio, your ads can appear on the absolute top of the page, on the top section of the page, or anywhere on the Google search result page.
  • As an example, if you want to have your ads served on the absolute top of the search result page 65% of the time, Google will automatically adjust your bids for this purpose.

Target Cost per Acquisition (CPA)

Suitable for the following goals:
  • Increasing conversions
  • Competitor targeting
Perfect for:
  • Google Search Ads
  • Google Smart Display Ads
  • Google Search & Display Remarketing
How you're Charged:
  • You're charged based on the target cost per action that you would like to reach and maintain.
  • Google will show your ads when there's a higher chance for you to maintain or lower your tCPA, based on the historical conversion data.
  • You'll need to have at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days to run tCPA ads.

Maximize Conversions

Suitable for the following goals:
  • Increasing conversions
Perfect for:
  • Google Search Ads
  • Google Search Remarketing
How you're Charged:
  • You're charged based on your daily budget available for conversions.
  • Google will show your ads when there's a higher chance for you to gain conversions at the lowest prices.
  • As an example, if you have a daily budget of MYR250, Google will ensure that you can get as many conversions as possible within that daily budget limit.

Target Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) Bidding

Suitable for the following goals:
  • Increasing conversion value
  • Increasing profitability
Perfect for:
  • Google Search Ads
  • Google Display Ads
  • Google Search / Display Remarketing
How you're Charged:
  • You're charged based on your daily budget available for conversions.
  • Google will show your ads when there's a higher chance for you to gain conversions at your expected return on ad spend.
  • As an example, if you'd like to earn RM7 for every RM1 you spend, then your target ROAS percentage value would be 700%. You'll need to input conversion values for each important action to track this properly.

Start by Choosing Your Campaign Goals

Without a proper campaign goal, you might not be using the best bidding strategy that will complement your business.

Once you have selected a goal for your campaign, you can spend your digital marketing expenditure much more efficiently, so always optimize for your campaign objectives!

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