Maximize Conversion Value Bidding

Google’s Smart Bidding offers a number of automated bidding strategies that leverage machine learning to optimize bids for conversion. Automated bidding can help account managers save time and focus on strategy, creative, and other marketing needs. Most PPC managers use or have experimented with eCPC, Target ROAS, Target CPA, and Maximize conversions, but they may not be familiar with Maximize Conversion Value, Google’s newest Smart Bidding strategy.

Maximize Conversion Value bidding attempts to capture the greatest conversion value possible with a given budget. The algorithm uses historical campaign data and contextual signals including device, location, time of day, demographics, query, and more to find the optimal CPC bid for each auction. Before testing Maximize Conversion bidding, make sure it’s a good fit for your business goals. You will need to have transaction-specific conversion value tracking in place or manually set values for the conversions you are optimizing toward from the Conversions tab in Google Ads. If you are already tracking revenue and your client is growth-oriented, Maximize Conversion Value is a good fit for your campaign. If your focus is on lead generation and CPA, this bid strategy can still be tested by setting values for your lead conversions.

 To start, set a ROAS target for your Maximize Conversion Value bid strategy if you have strict return on investment goals. This may prevent the algorithm from capturing the maximum revenue possible but, you should see some lift in conversion value while maintaining your ROAS. As with any automated bid strategy, regularly evaluate if Maximize Conversion Value is helping you reach your performance goals. 

 At Adtaxi, we tested Maximize Conversion Value on search campaigns for an ecommerce client and saw a 34% increase ROAS and 36% increase in revenue month over month with only 2% higher spend. We also tested Smart Shopping, which uses maximize conversion value bidding, to drive a 43% ROAS increase over standard Shopping.

Maximize Conversion Value will attempt to spend your full daily budget. If your budgets are set higher than your average daily spend, consider reducing them before implementing this bid strategy on your campaigns. If you’re not quite ready to make the change to Maximize Conversion Value, optimize for conversion value is now available as an option for eCPC bidding and can be a good strategy for revenue focused accounts already using eCPC.