On Tuesday, Google announced that auctions on search partners sites could use Smart Bidding, rather than smart pricing, when an advertiser has conversion tracking set up.
According to Google, Smart Bidding offers better performance since it takes into account more contextual signals “to optimize bids for each and every auction.”
Used to power manual bids for search partners, smart pricing looks at signals such as the keyword lists or concepts that triggered the ad and the type of page on which the ad was served.
Google says that with Smart Bidding, the bids are optimized automatically on search partner sites, using the same signals as smart pricing plus attributes about potential customers. “For example, bids may be reduced if the potential customer is on an audience list that historically had a lower conversion rate.”
Here’s more points on the change:
- The aim is to maximize conversions on search partners at a similar cost per conversion as Google Search. Smart bidding may set lower bids on a search partner site if you have a lower conversion rate on that site, for example.
- Conversely, Google says, “Smart Bidding may raise your bid to help you get more traffic and conversions from that site at the $50 cost per conversion you receive on Google Search.”
- Advertisers can segment data by network to see search partners’ performance but are not able to see their granular performance at the site level.
- The change is effective immediately.