This week Google launched Enhanced CPC, yet another bidding option that sort of begins to fill the space between manual CPC bidding and Conversion Optimizer.
It’s “intended” to adjust bids automatically based on the likelihood of a keyword to convert, EVERY time that keyword qualifies for an auction.
Google gives the following examples of how it could work:
Adjust your bid depending on how well a particular search or display network partner site in the Google network has converted for you in the past Recognize when specific words within a keyword (e.g. ‘kits’) convert well and adjust your bid when users search on variations of these terms (e.g. ‘model airplane kits for children’) Detect attributes such as the user’s location, language settings, browser, and operating system and analyze how these attributes may impact the likelihood of your ad converting
The first bullet jumps out at me as a possible alternative to some issues that I have with the search partner network.
If you segment your campaign reports by network it’s often revealed that that Google search has a good CPA, but the aggregate CPA for the campaign is dragged down by poorer performance on the search partner network.
An approach that some folks use is to create two duplicate campaigns for the same keyword set:
- A campaign opted into Google Search only
- A duplicate campaign opted into Google Search AND Search Partners, but with lower bids
My results with this approach have been mixed, plus it’s extra work because when tweaking one campaign it’s usually best to consider whether parallel tweaks need to happen on the other one as well.
The way I read Google’s first bullet above is that it may mitigate at least some of the need to handle this issue with separate campaigns, and let Enhanced CPC do the math.
I’m always cautious when implementing new features that are rolled out because of the chance that you’re putting current performance at risk.
However, the way that Enhanced CPC is “supposed” to work is similar to how you might set things up with Adwords Campaign Experiments (ACE)
Enhanced CPC will automatically segment your impressions 50/50 into a control group and an experimental group. If the latter produce good results it’ll raise the experiment impressions to 75% (and eventually 100% the way I understand it).
So at least you’re not risking all of your impressions by testing this.
I still have lots of noise in my head about some more granular issues, but will have to just wait and see.
