Before you begin

If you don’t yet know what type of automated bid strategy is right for you, read about automated bidding.

Before you can set up a Target CPA bid strategy, you’ll need to set up conversion tracking.

How it works

Using historical information about your campaign and evaluating the contextual signals present at auction-time, Target CPA bidding automatically finds an optimal CPC bid for your ad each time it's eligible to appear. Google Ads sets these bids to achieve an average CPA equal to your target across all campaigns using this strategy.

Some conversions may cost more than your target and some may cost less, but altogether Google Ads will try to keep your cost per conversion equal to the target CPA you set. These changes in CPA take place because your actual CPA depends on factors outside Google's control, like changes to your website or ads or increased competition in ad auctions. Additionally, your actual conversion rate can be lower or higher than the predicted conversion rate.

For example, if you choose a target CPA of $10, Google Ads will automatically set your CPC bids to try to get you as many conversions at $10 on average. To help improve your performance in every ad auction, this strategy adjusts bids using real-time signals like device, browser, location, time of day, remarketing list, and more.

Settings

Target CPA

This is the average amount you’d like to pay for a conversion. The target CPA you set may influence the number of conversions you get. Setting a target that is too low, for example, may cause you to forgo clicks that could result in conversions, resulting in fewer total conversions.

If your campaign has historical conversion data, Google Ads will recommend a target CPA. This recommendation is calculated based on your actual CPA performance over the last few weeks. When you create a new campaign, Google Ads will recommend a target CPA based on your account’s historical conversion data.

When formulating a recommended target CPA, we’ll exclude performance from the last few days to account for conversions that may take more than a day to complete following an ad click. You can choose whether to use this recommended target CPA or to set your own.

Bid limits

Setting bid limits for your Target CPA bid strategy isn’t recommended, because it can restrict Google Ads’ automatic optimization of your bid. It can also prevent Google Ads from adjusting your bids to the amount that best meets your target CPA. If you do set bid limits, they’ll be used in Search Network auctions only. Bid limits are only available for portfolio (not standard) Target CPA bid strategies.

• Max. bid limit: The highest max. CPC bid that you want Google Ads to set for any keywords, ad groups or campaigns using Target CPA bidding.
• Min. bid limit: The minimum CPC bid that you want Google Ads to set for any campaigns or ad groups using your Target CPA strategy. Note that the Google Ads bidding algorithm might set a max. CPC bid that's below your minimum bid limit, generally due to smart pricing. This means that the bid limit that you set here isn't the absolute lowest bid that could be set.

Device bid adjustments

Device bid adjustments for Target CPA allow you to prioritize conversions by device. You can set adjustments for desktop, tablet, and mobile.

Unlike bid adjustments for manual CPC, your bid adjustments for Target CPA modify the value of your CPA target, rather than the bids themselves. For best performance, you may want to remove your manual CPC bid adjustments when switching to Target CPA.

If your target CPA is $10, setting a bid adjustment of +40% for mobile will increase your target CPA to $14 on mobile devices. To prevent your ads from showing on any mobile devices, you can set a mobile bid adjustment of -100%.

Average target CPA

Your average target CPA is the cost-weighted average CPA that your bid strategy optimized for. It includes the average of your device bid adjustments, ad group target CPAs, and any changes you’ve made to your target CPA over time. Because of these variables, your average target CPA may be different from the target CPA that you set.

This metric lets you measure the CPA that your bid strategy targeted for specific time periods. By changing the date range, you can see what your strategy actually optimized for over that period. Keep in mind, you won’t have an average target CPA for time periods without traffic.

You can find this metric in your bid strategy report beside your “Actual CPA”, which represents the actual CPA that this strategy was able to achieve. Average target CPA is available for both standard and portfolio bid strategies.

Pay for conversions

You can choose to pay for conversions, instead of clicks on Smart display campaigns that use Target CPA bidding. When setting up your campaign, go to the “Bidding” section. Look for the header labeled “Pay for” and select Conversions from the dropdown menu. Learn more about paying for conversions.

Video ad conversion attribution for Target CPA bidding

For video ads using Target CPA bidding, Google Ads uses conversion data from your campaigns to predict how likely it is an engagement with your video ad will lead to a conversion.

Engagements for TrueView for action ads are defined as clicks on the ad or 10 seconds of viewing time. If both happen, only the click is counted. Viewing at least 10 seconds of a video ad counts as leading to a website conversion if the conversion happens within 3 days of the engagement. For users who click on your ad, conversions will still be attributed over your current conversion window.

* Nguồn: Google