For a successful AdWords campaign, mastering your bidding strategy is essential. By tailoring bids based on keywords, location, device, time of day, and audience, you can significantly enhance the effectiveness and relevance of your advertising.

AdWords offers tools for bid management, but to truly excel, consider using supplementary PPC tools for greater flexibility. At Brainlabs, we’ve developed scripts to automate bidding, giving us enhanced control, flexibility, data integration (by incorporating third-party datasets), error and inefficiency monitoring, and increased speed by eliminating repetitive tasks. We’re pleased to share some of these open-source scripts, which you can download and use immediately. However, to become a PPC expert, strive to create your own scripts over time, as each campaign is unique and requires custom solutions for exceptional results. Ready to get more out of your Google Ads bids? Run our free Google Ads Performance Grader to get a personalized account audit!

Bidding Around the Clock

Search behavior fluctuates throughout the day. For example, online pizza orders peak around 7 pm, not 11 am. Device type also matters; user behavior differs significantly between desktop and mobile searches.

Ideally, bidding should reflect these temporal and device-based variations. However, AdWords ad scheduling only allows six daily bidding windows, which is insufficient for many campaigns. That’s why we developed a 24/7 bidding tool, enabling hourly bid adjustments across all devices. Using your AdWords data, this tool optimizes bidding by aligning spending with predicted performance. For instance, why pay for top SERP placement during high-traffic, low-conversion periods? Conversely, why limit spending at 9 pm on Sunday when your target audience is most receptive? In one case, 24/7 bidding was crucial for a finance client with significant weekly audience behavior fluctuations. Our analysis revealed substantial conversion rate differences based on time and day. For instance, Monday evenings historically yielded strong application rates, while Thursday mornings consistently performed poorly. The data suggested aligning bids with these fluctuating conversion rates. However, we aimed for even greater granularity, as our analysis showed often-significant hourly variations. The 24/7 bidding tool not only enabled hourly bidding but also allowed device-specific bid adjustments, concentrating ad spend on users more likely to convert. This data-driven, automated bidding approach increased new customers by 17% while reducing CPA by 14%, effectively focusing the budget on high-potential searchers. When the client increased spending for growth, we boosted conversions by 29% while maintaining the original CPA. Download the script and access further guidance on its usage through this link.

Bidding for Real-Time Ad Position

Controlling your ad’s position offers significant advantages. In competitive landscapes like mobile, securing top placement can be crucial for campaign success.

However, there are instances where a lower position might be more beneficial. Our next tool grants you this control. It analyzes real-time AdWords auction data to automatically modify bids according to your target position. Segmentation by time and device allows you to, for example, ensure a specific keyword ranks first on mobile at 12 pm. While useful for any PPC campaign, this tool proved particularly effective for a charity client. Their search advertising, often reacting to global events like international crises, required a bidding strategy that could anticipate shifts in search patterns. During one such crisis, our real-time bidding tool enabled automatic bid adjustments to maintain visibility by targeting specific auction positions. We knew that 90% of competing bidders would be active by day’s end, potentially pushing our position down. However, the tool allowed us to set target positions for individual keywords, ensuring consistent visibility. This strategy yielded a ROAS of 3.2 while significantly exceeding the client’s conversion target. To download the script and obtain detailed usage instructions, follow this link.

Visualizing Data with Heat Maps

While flexible bidding is essential, understanding the optimal strategy requires analyzing audience data. Before anything else, you need to analyze audience data to grasp how user behavior changes according to different variables that might influence a search. Our next script generates heat maps—visual representations of search behavior segmented by time and device. Here’s an example:

This example illustrates click-through rates at different hours throughout the week. The depicted AdWords metric can be changed, and maps can be segmented by device. Furthermore, the script averages the data (we recommend using at least six weeks of account activity), revealing trends more clearly by minimizing random fluctuations. This tool offers a valuable starting point for understanding performance and gaining insights into bid optimization for any PPC account you manage. Download the script and find detailed usage instructions via this link.

Keyword Bidding Scripts

Analyzing keyword performance extends beyond AdWords’ built-in features. Continuous optimization is possible by effectively extracting insights from accumulated data. This script examines your account’s search terms, aggregating the performance of all queries containing your phrases at the account, campaign, and ad group levels. For instance, you can compare the effectiveness of various adjectives to determine the most suitable one for your ad copy. If you’re advertising ice cream, you could test whether “delicious,” “Italian,” or “refreshing” performs best. This might also inform keyword selection for specific campaigns.

Another useful script uncovers search trends for terms related to your chosen keyword. For example, if you choose “suitcase,” the report reveals how people search for that term, including all relevant AdWords metrics. Perhaps color adjectives like “black” and “vermilion” dominate impression share, or maybe it’s “lifetime warranty,” a feature offered by some luggage brands. These findings might prompt a strategic overhaul or at least provide valuable ad copy adjustments. Sharing this report with clients allows them to extract insights for their offline marketing efforts. By understanding this data, you can optimize ad copy and keyword bidding strategies to maximize results. These are just two examples of the vast potential for using automation to enhance data analysis, processing, and utilization in PPC account management.

Optimization: An Ongoing Endeavor

We continuously develop new tools to address evolving client needs and adapt to the dynamic nature of AdWords and the search landscape. Even on a micro-level, PPC account management demands daily attention. Data analysis, strategy adjustments, tracking, and monitoring are ongoing processes. Anyone can dabble in PPC, but excellence requires adaptability, innovation, and vigilance. Automate wherever possible. It not only saves time but also empowers you to achieve what other advertisers struggle with due to the time constraints of manually managing large-scale accounts. While bidding is a major aspect, account building, reporting, monitoring, auditing, and overall management also benefit from automation. To excel in PPC, build a robust technology stack and become a data expert.