Pay Per Click Bid Management - Step One

Effective Bid Management - Step 1: Filtering Keywords with Clicks & No Conversions
Filtering Keywords with Clicks & No Conversions identifies irrelevant Keywords in an account. Also identifies Keywords that have lost traffic and or conversion based on previous PPC bid optimization. Doing this based on 1-2 days or weeks of data would not be recommended [...]

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Pay Per Click Bid Management - Data Storage & Filtering

Whether you are planning on building an in house Bid Management Tool or simply conducing a manual analysis to manage your PPC Bids, Data Storage & Filtering is the foundation to any bid management strategy. Historical Data and performance of your PPC Campaigns is important because:

Historical Data should be used to make data driven decisions [...]

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Basic PPC Analysis

4. Effective PPC Bid Management, 4.1 Basic PPC Analaysis Comments (1)

Filtering and knowing which are converting and which ones are loosing money is the key to any account optimization strategy.

Filter that are generating clicks and cost, but no conversions at all. Doing this based on 1-2 days or weeks of data would not be recommended unless you are dealing with a product that generates extremely high volume of traffic, clicks, and conversions within that time frame. Recommended time frame would be at least a month or more. After identifying these , ask yourself:

  1. Is the Max. too high?
  2. As a result is the Avg. Position too high and therefore generating a lot of junk traffic?
  3. Is the not relevant to the search query?
  4. Is the appropriate for the and ?

Fact of the matter is, if the has not converted in over a month and has only contributed to negative spend then it will not convert anytime in the future and you should consider pausing it or deleing it from the account. Another important fact to note is, you might have only a dozen with high spend or you might have 1000s of with only $1-$2 in spend each but those 1s and 2s add up.

Filter that generate Conversions but Negative ROI or higher than your target CPA. If your account is structured keeping your business goals in mind and you have a solid list in the account, you will only have a handful of fitting this profile and for that matter only a handful of converting in your account overall (80-20 rule always). Ask yourself questions:

  1. Is the Max. too high?
  2. As a result is the Avg. Position too high and therefore generating a lot of junk traffic and bringing down your overall Conversion Rate?
  3. What is the CPA or ROI goal and how does it compare to the CPA or ROI of the ?

Based on your business setting, use any formula you wish to use to adjust those bids. I personally tend to use the following formula the most:

(Target CPA/Actual CPA) X Current Max.

Notice I dint provide you with a formula to use if you are chasing an ROI goal. Reason being, using ROI as a an element in a formula can sometimes come up with outliers for bids and therefore I try to shy away from it. If You have an ROI goal, figure out what CPA value will help you achieve that goal and use the formula above to calculate bids. I am open to any suggestions for bid calculation using ROI as a metrics from any of the readers of this blog.

Filter that generate no conversions or clicks. This is usually an interesting set to monitor. You can further break this list down to two sets:

  1. with positions 5 or better
  2. with positions worse than 5

You don’t have to take 5 as the deciding position, based on your accounts historical performance, you can choose any position that you know is the cut off limit for you. Based on the suggestions above, if positions are better than 5 that should tell you that the just doesn’t have search volume and hence is not right for your account. Pausing/deleting those would be wise. On the flip side, with worse than position 5 are the ones that you can further test to see if they are worth keeping in your account or not. Now there is no hard and fast formula for this, so simply increasing bids by percentage amount for these and follow up monitoring should tell you over time if they are keepers or not.

Filter that are converting as well as meeting your ROI or CPA goals. You could set up another test around these by increasing their bids and being a bit more aggressive with them. Some recommendations:

  1. Create a separate campaign around them to focus only on those with highly targeted ad copies (make sure you pause the original)
  2. Analyze their position and test if a higher or lower position increases or decreases conversions overtime (be careful to monitor them and not to loose all your good work with them before the test)
  3. Testing their bids is another test that will eventually lead you to #b i.e. positions getting higher or lower
  4. Or you can simply leave them as is and monitor them over time to make sure they maintain their performance

Related posts


@ August 31, 2008

Pay Per Click Bid Management - Step Three

4. Effective PPC Bid Management, 4.6 PPC Bid Management-Step Three Comments (1)

Effective - Step Three: Filter that generate Conversions but Negative ROI or higher than your target CPA.

If your account is structured keeping your business goals in mind and you have a solid list in the account, you will only have a handful of fitting this profile and for that matter only a handful of converting in your account overall (80-20 rule always). Ask yourself questions:

  • Is the Max. too high?
  • As a result is the Avg. Position too high and therefore generating a lot of junk traffic and bringing down your overall Conversion Rate?
  • What is the CPA or ROI goal and how does it compare to the CPA or ROI of the ?

Based on your business setting, use any formula you wish to use to adjust those bids. I personally tend to use the following formula the most:

(Target CPA/Actual CPA) X Current Max.

Notice I dint provide you with a formula to use if you are chasing an ROI goal. Reason being, using ROI as a an element in a formula can sometimes come up with outliers for bids and therefore I try to shy away from it. If You have an ROI goal, figure out what CPA value will help you achieve that goal and use the formula above to calculate bids. I am open to any suggestions for bid calculation using ROI as a metrics from any of the readers of this blog.

  • It is advised that you base this decision on a large chunk of data - hence the first logic to check if there is at least 2 months worth of data available.
  • Depending on your product/service, only a weeks worth of data might be enough for you to conduct this analysis due to the high volume of Impressions, Clicks, & Cost.
  • Always keep track of your and changes as that can effect conversions too.

This helps identifying that have:

  • High & High Conversion
  • High & Low Conversion
  • Low & Low Conversions
  • Low & High Conversions

Lost Impressions, Clicks, & Conversions:

  • Could be due to Seasonality?
  • Could be due to Increased Competition?
  • Could be due to previous (maybe a was not converting as effectively, or bid was decreased aggressively)?

Related posts


@ August 14, 2008

Pay Per Click Bid Management - Step Two

4. Effective PPC Bid Management, 4.5 PPC Bid Management-Step Two Comments (0)

Effective - Step Two: Filtering with No Clicks and No Conversions

Filtering with No Clicks & No Conversions identifies irrelevant in an account. It also identifies that have lost traffic and/or conversion based on previous bid optimizations. This is usually an interesting set to monitor. You can further break this list down to two sets:

You don’t have to take 5 as the deciding position, based on your accounts historical performance, you can choose any position that you know is the cut off limit for you. Based on the suggestions above, if positions are better than 5 that should tell you that the just doesn’t have search volume and hence is not right for your account. Pausing/deleting those would be wise. On the flip side, with worse than position 5 are the ones that you can further test to see if they are worth keeping in your account or not. Now there is no hard and fast formula for this, so simply increasing bids by percentage amount for these and follow up monitoring should tell you over time if they are keepers or not.

  • It is advised that you base this decision on a large chunk of data - hence the first logic to check if there is at least 2 months worth of data available.
  • Depending on your product/service, only a weeks worth of data might be enough for you to conduct this analysis due to the high volume of Impressions, Clicks, & Cost.
  • Always keep track of your and changes as that can effect conversions too.
  • This analysis has helped me identify any that have no search volume or their was set too low to prove their relevancy to the account.

Lost Impressions, Clicks, & Conversions:

  • Could be due to Seasonality?
  • Could be due to Increased Competition?
  • Could be due to previous (maybe a was not converting as effectively, or bid was decreased aggressively)?

Related posts


@ August 1, 2008