We’re excited to announce the release of new reporting and Floodlight tag features for bid strategies. We added new reporting columns to help you analyze and optimize your bid strategies, and also added powerful options when creating/updating Floodlight tag bid strategies.
New bid strategy columns
To supply you with more data to help improve bid strategy performance, you can choose to display the following columns in the DS3 UI:
- Current keywords: The number of keywords currently in a bid strategy (not the number of keywords during the selected date range). You can click the column header to sort by number of keywords, which allows you to focus on the performance of your most active bid strategies.
- % at max bid / % at min bid: The percentage of time that keywords reached their maximum or minimum strategy bids over the selected time range. You may want to take action if the percentage is high, as you might not achieve your goals within the specified bid range. For example, if your keywords reached the max bid a high percentage of time, you may want to raise your max bid.
- % without clicks / % without conv / % without impr: The percentage of time that keywords did not have clicks, conversions, or impressions over the selected time range.
- If any of these percentages are high, you may want to take a look at the existing keywords in the bid strategy and add more useful ones.
- If the % without clicks is very high, it might be helpful to raise your max bid. If it’s a position bid strategy, you may also want to increase the range (for example, change a range of 6 : 10 to 1.5 : 10).
- You can also watch the trends of these percentages and adjust bid settings accordingly.
To see these new columns, click the Columns button in the toolbar above the performance summary graph. Click an + Add column button and select the columns from the dropdown that appears.
The columns will appear at the bid strategy and bid strategy keywords levels (Current keywords only appears at the bid strategy level).
Improved Floodlight tag bid strategy management
As we mentioned when we introduced Floodlight tag bidding in DS3, this bid strategy type allows you to optimize your keyword program based on the type of conversion. Now, as part of the UI improvements, you can set the cost per action (CPA) or effective revenue share (ERS) for multiple Floodlight tags and groups at once. Just (1) select the check boxes next to the tags and groups, (2) select CPA or ERS in the dropdown below the Floodlight box, (3) enter the value, and (4) click Set bid.
You can click the Group by bid target button to group the tags that have the same value. This makes it easy to change the CPA/ERS goal for all groups/tags with the same goal in an existing bid strategy. You can also use this feature to initially set all keywords in the bid strategy to the same goal. Just select the check box next to the No bid target group and enter your goal.
Finally, you can now filter the Floodlight tags and groups to see only those that apply to you. The Floodlight box dynamically changes as you type in the Filter Floodlight tags field.
Visit the Help Center to learn more about Floodlight tag bidding and other bid strategy goals.
Posted by Jeff and Steven, Software Engineers
