Understanding Smart Bidding Performance

This article goes over your Smart Bidding Performance in Google Ads.

Understanding and evaluating your Smart Bidding Performance in Google Ads is an important tool to see how your strategies are performing. The metrics in these reports will be specific to each type of bid strategy. Other important data including bid strategy status, average target, conversion delay, and top signals will also be shown.

How to Find Your Bid Strategies Report

Standard Strategies

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. Click Campaigns. A dropdown will appear below. Then click on Campaigns. You should see a row for each campaign.
   
   
3. Under the "Bid strategy type" column, click on the link to see a campaign level report.
   
   
4. If the campaign is using a standard (campaign-level) bid strategy, you will see a campaign level report. If the campaign is part of a portfolio, you will be directed to the bid strategy report for the entire portfolio bid strategy.

Portfolio Strategies

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. Click the tools icon 
3. Click "Budgets and bidding" and the select Bid strategies
   
   
4. Click on the name of the portfolio bid strategy to see the report

Understanding your Smart Bidding performance

In your report, you'll find the bid strategy status, top signals, scorecard, conversion delay, and performance. 

• Top Signals: Some conversion-based strategies like Target CPA and Maximize conversions will highlight features of select dimensions where the bid strategy us automatically optimizing your bids for visitors who are more or less likely to convert. Top signals may include device type, location, day of the week, keywords, or your remarketing and Customer Match lists.
• Scorecard: This is a preview of metrics specific to the type of bid strategy you are looking at. An example is a report on the Target CPA, which will show you your "Average Target CPA," "Actual CPA," and "Conversions" along with others. A report on Maximize clicks will show you the metrics for "Clicks" and "Cost per Click."
• Conversion delay: Conversion delay will help you understand how long it takes for most of your users to convert. When all your conversions have been reported, you will be able to better evaluate the performance of the bid strategy.
• Performance history: Performance will show you the comparison of the performance of up to two metrics over time. Choose any two columns that are significant to your campaign and adjust the timeframe to see the data for any date range.

There are also different types of reports including Maximize Conversions, Target impression share, Maximize clicks, and Maximize conversion value bidding strategies at both the campaign or portfolio level.