In Google Adwords, Enhanced CPC bidding is a great mix of manual as well as smart bidding. But is the new change going to force advertisers to change their bidding strategies?
If you are running an online business, be it an e-commerce website or a blog, you know that in Google Adwords Enhanced CPC is a bid strategy that adjusts cost-per-click (CPC) in a way that can achieve maximum conversions. Enhanced CPC can be best described as the best of Manual bidding combined with the best of Smart bidding, raising bids in situations that are more likely to get converted into a potential sale while lowering those that do not have as much potential.
Therefore, each time your ad is about to be displayed, the bid is either raised or lowered depending on its likeliness of getting converted into a sale. So, you can not only obtain more conversions, but do so by either maintaining or reducing your cost per click.
However, last week, Google announced a new change that is going to be made to Enhanced CPC. This is what the announcement said:
Enhanced CPC (ECPC) bidding now has more flexibility when adjusting your bids to help you get more conversions.
Before this, the bid flexibility of Enhanced CPCs was dependent on the maximum CPC and increased by a 30 per cent above it. However, now the 30 per cent bid cap will no longer exist. Enhanced CPC is already considering location and target audience. Which is why advertisers no longer have to set bid adjustments manually to account for the dimensions. This is going to affect the following things on your online website:
- Average CPC: Google will now have more than 30 per cent bid control on searches that it believes are likely to be converted to sales. While it is still possible for you to pay more than the maximum cost per click, your average CPC will be kept below your maximum CPC bid by Google.
- Bids from different locations: Google might use its analytics to predict that a user from America might convert differently than a user from Europe, even if the same keyword is being used. With this ECPC bidding, your bids will be adjusted according to a location that provides high conversion rates.
Other than this, the following are going to be affected:
- The maximum CPC bid set by you in Google Adwords.
- Your marketing campaign’s CPA, inspite of the change in your CPC.
- Your device bids will remain unaffected, so you must continue setting bid adjustments for each device.
The changes have already started rolling in, so you are going to be unable to opt out of it. A tip to keep in mind is to closely monitor the performance of your campaign. If you think you are unhappy with this change, you can always switch to the manual bidding strategy. With manual bidding, all the control is in your hand. The only drawback will be that you will have to put in constant efforts in regularly changing your bids, if you wish to see it work for you.
