Automated Bidding Vs Manual Bidding

Improvements in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence have enabled all ad platforms to improve automation and simplify digital advertising for everyone. Google, one of the most noted advertising platforms especially for PPC campaigns has made automation its most crucial feature improvement last year, paving way for many small businesses. Google hopes to streamline all of the PPC marketing efforts with Automated Bidding.

But how helpful, Is it? Are Marketers worried about automation?

Smaller businesses and young marketers find automation the most beneficial because it simplifies PPC on the user level, whereas some marketers are very apprehensive about giving complete control to Google. They fear automation might replace their relevance in the Online Marketing sphere. Well, What do you think? Have you been using Automated bidding? Is it a timesaver for Marketers?

To understand this better let us pit Automated bidding with Manual Bidding and learn which is the way forward in driving better ROI.

Why Automated Bidding?

Automated bidding is hailed by Google as a revolutionary feature that will save marketers a great deal of time and resources. It simplifies the process by managing bids using hundreds of signals. Each Automated bidding type is designed to accomplish a specific objective. Therefore, it is crucial to define the goal you want to achieve even before deciding on a strategy.

Google has made automation in bidding with the following goals,

Increase Brand Awareness/ Visibility
Generate more relevant leads
Increase Conversions/ Sales Volume.

Is it suited for your needs? Who would find Automated bidding more useful?

Campaign managers who manage many different Ad accounts.
Campaign managers with a large sum of data.
Campaign managers with a specific goal for their campaigns.
Campaign managers who want to save time on campaign monitoring
Campaign managers with less experience managing Manual bidding?

Advantages of Automated Bidding

Ability To Choose Goals. The first and foremost benefit of automated bidding is being able to select goals. Automated Bidding is set up by defining goals making it adaptable to any business goals. So, a Campaign Manager must understand and plan as per a chosen goal for their campaign. Google offers 7 bid strategies that align well with most of the goals needed for Marketers. We have listed them below, continue reading to know more about them.
Stay Stress-Free. By bidding with automated bidding, campaign managers can remain stress-free and save a lot of time. They also can stay off from Campaign monitoring without much of their involvement. Although they should ensure that they keep a tab on budget and data fed into Google’s Machine learning engine against the rightly chosen bid strategy.
Manage Ads With Facts, Driven By Data. Fed with the right amount of data, Google’s AI does the guessing game and decision-making for you. All you need to do as a Campaign manager is to choose the right bid strategy as per your defined goals.

Now, let's discuss all the 7 Automated Bidding Strategies

Target Impression Share. Target Impression Share improves ad visibility by automatically setting up bids that help you showcase your ads either on the top of the Google search results or anywhere on the Google search results page.
Maximize Clicks. Maximizing clicks is a bidding strategy to increase your sites/ landing page visits. It automatically sets bids to help you get as many clicks as possible within your budget. It is a Search Network only bidding strategy.
Enhanced CPC. A bid strategy that lets you automate and adjust your CPC to maximize conversions or conversion value. It combines Manual bid with smart bidding and raises or lowers bids as per the likeliness of the lead to convert.
Target CPA. Target CPA betters up your conversions by automatically setting up bids for increasing conversions as per the target cost per acquisition set by you
Target ROAS. Helps in meeting a return conversion value on ads spends by setting up bids automatically as per the target return on ads spend value set by you.
Maximize Conversions. It’s a bidding strategy that sets bids automatically to ensure maximum conversions from spending your budget. But also, the Campaign Manager can set a target CPA to meet conversions as per the target cost per acquisition set by them.
Maximize Conversion Value. It helps in meeting a maximum return conversion value from spending your budget. Again, the campaign manager can set a target ROAS to meet a conversion value as per the target return on ads spend value.

What is Manual Bidding Strategy

It is a bidding method where the bid value(CPC) is set manually without any help from Google’s AI or Machine learning algorithms. Campaign managers have full control over their campaigns and can set a maximum cost-per-click value for an ad group or even separate bids for individual keywords or placements.

Manual bidding is a highly decisive bidding method and requires a lot of monitoring and optimisation to achieve maximum return on ROI. Campaign managers should have a good understanding of the PPC campaign.

When to use Manual Bidding

Manual bidding lets you control the campaign and is best suited for lower ad budget campaigns and a smaller sum of data. It gives you an edge over automated bidding when there is a need for making quick changes and updates to the campaign. And. as it requires constant monitoring and optimisation, it’s recommended to be used when you can spend enough time on the campaign.

Some of the pros of Manual Bidding

Have full control. As discussed before, the Campaign manager has full control over the campaign such as controlling their cost on keywords or phrases that they feel will help them win the bid.
Set up a campaign with a lower Ad budget. Manual bidding allows you to run campaigns with a lower ad budget and returns under their control. Hence campaign managers have a heads up on achieving maximum ROI out of their budget.
Can adapt quickly to changes. Any changes that you make to the campaign setting get updated immediately across all Google platforms.

Conclusion

Although Google is pushing forward for more Machine learning and AI-centric approaches across all its platforms, both Automated and Manual bidding have their advantages respectively as per the needs and benefits they provide to the campaign manager. It is important to consider different other parameters and requirements such as data volume and budget to decide which is apt for your campaign. Even experienced and knowledge come to play when deciding the bid strategy. Automated Bidding has a long way to go and would need a lot of improvements to excel on par to run without human intervention.

We should carefully note that even though all this automation help in simplifying the bidding process, it is still necessary to keep track of the campaign’s progress. Instead of worrying. Marketers need to learn and adapt to these new changes and embrace new features like Automated bidding or Performance Max to drive better ROIs for their brand.