Utilizing DoubleClick Bid Strategies in an Effort to Reduce CPCs

The primary goal of the ‘Bid Lock’ or ‘Ad Position’ strategy is to ensure that your ads appear in a specific position that you target. This strategy is most often used for branding campaigns or core branded terms when exposure is the primary goal. However, with periodic bid adjustments, it can also be used to identify the most efficient CPC for those selected keywords at the target position. In order to find this sweet spot, you’ll want to check in on performance at least every couple of days.

How Does the Bid Lock Strategy Work?

After the initial minimum and maximum bids have been set, allow a week or so to gather data for later. As long as your Target Bid is lower than your Max CPC and the ‘Bid Strategy Health’ column does not indicate that you need to raise your max CPC, you will then chip away at the Max CPC by a couple of cents every day. Once your Target Bid is higher than your Max CPC and the ‘Bid Strategy Health’ column indicates that you must increase your Max CPC to maintain the specified average position, there will no longer be any more potential to lower CPCs at that point in time.

Results

When we discovered a retail client was struggling with abnormally high core term CPCs that were well over their industry average, we exhausted a number of different strategies to improve their numbers. Implementing the Bid Lock Strategy across these keywords was the most effective tactic. After a six-month period of time, the average CPC among this group of keywords fell 56%. Over this period, the gradual decline in CPCs accounted for significant savings.

How To Implement the Bid Lock Strategy

1. Select ‘Bid Strategies’ within the menu bar on the left-hand side.
2. Select ‘New Bid Strategy’.
3. Name your strategy accordingly and select the corresponding engine account.
4. Under ‘Goal to Optimize’ select ‘Keyword Position’.
5. Next, select the minimum and maximum average position desired for the keyword(s) that will be included in the strategy.
6. Select a default bid range by entering minimum and maximum bid desired.
   • Ensure that your max bid is set high enough to secure an average position within the desired range that you previously selected.
7. To select the keyword(s) you would like to include within the bid strategy, navigate to a keywords report.
8. Select the check box next to the keywords that you would like to include.
9. In the toolbar above the keyword report, select the ‘Edit’ drop down and then select ‘Change bid strategy’.
10. Choose the corresponding bid strategy within the ‘Select a bid strategy’ drop down.
11. Indicate start date and save.

You can find more information on DoubleClick bidding strategies here.