Bidding on the right keywords, at the right time, with the right amount, is one of the biggest challenges in campaign management. It can either make your app more visible to the right audience, or you may end up wasting your budget on a non-returning strategy. This guide will walk you through the features and benefits of Smart Bidding and how to use it to make your bidding strategy more fruitful and optimized.
Why use Smart Bidding?
As the name suggests, Smart Bidding is one of the smart tools under Co-pilot on SearchAds.com, which refines your bidding strategies while managing your Apple Search Ads campaigns. You can continuously optimize your bidding strategies based on keyword performance, the share of voice, competition, and historical campaign data. It also checks the benchmarks, seasonality, traffic and look-back window, and performance data in the background at the campaign or ad group level to fine-tune strategies and achieve specified targets.
Smart Bidding can be applied to either single or multiple campaigns and ad groups, and it supports simultaneous optimization across multiple storefronts. The tool is designed to minimize side effects; it ensures that any bid adjustments made are carefully calculated to enhance campaign performance without disrupting overall traffic flow.
You can use Smart Bidding to improve your campaign results by automating bid adjustments according to your primary goal. Whether the aim is to decrease acquisition costs, increase visibility, or achieve a high return on ad spend (ROAS), selecting the most relevant optimization mode is crucial.
There are 4 optimization modes to choose from:
ROAS optimization
Cost per acquisition (CPA)
Cost per install (CPI)
Cost per goal (CPG)
For CPA, CPI, and CPG modes, you can choose from 2 strategies: scale-up or optimization. For the ROAS mode, the only strategy available is optimization.
Now that we have covered the basics of Smart Bidding, let's look at how you can start utilizing it.
How to set up
Using Smart Bidding is easier than you think, and it just takes 3 simple steps. One crucial detail to keep in mind is that Smart Bidding can be activated either at the campaign level or at the ad group level—but not both simultaneously for the same campaign. Also, you can’t add a campaign or ad group to multiple Smart Bidding optimization groups.
Access Smart Bidding
Log into your SearchAds.com account, and you can find Smart Bidding under “Co-pilot” in the sidebar on the left side of the dashboard.
Once you navigate to the Smart Bidding section, you'll see all your Smart Bidding activities, categorized by the metric you choose to optimize. On that screen, you'll see all the details of your activities and their corresponding CPA, CPI, CPG and ROAS metrics. You can use Smart Bidding based on different goals. You can choose to set a CPA goal, a CPI/CPG (Cost per Goal) goal, or a ROAS goal. In the next section, we explain these in more detail.
To create a new Smart Bidding, you need to click “Create New” in the upper right corner and decide whether you want to apply Smart Bidding to your campaign or ad group and click “Continue.”
Define your goals
As we mentioned before in the article, you can set specific performance targets for your campaigns, such as desired CPA, CPI, CPG or ROAS.
If you want to set a CPA goal:
From the Smart Bidding section, choose the CPA Optimization option.
Once the optimization mode is determined, decide whether to apply Smart Bidding at the campaign level or ad group level. Additionally, you should choose whether to implement Smart Bidding across single or multiple campaigns or ad groups.
After selecting your campaign or ad group, you’ll have 2 options to choose from for your optimization strategy:
CPA Optimization for reducing costs below the average.
Scale Up to increase reach and visibility at up to 20% above average CPA.
4. Depending on the strategy you want to follow, set your target CPA. Note that targets must adhere to specified limits above or below your average CPA.
Note that the average CPA is calculated based on the data from the last 3 days (including today), and the minimum and maximum target CPA can be +/- 20% from the average.
If you set a CPI or CPG goal:
From the Smart Bidding section, choose the CPI Optimization or CPG Optimization option.
Once the optimization mode is determined, decide whether to apply Smart Bidding at the campaign level or ad group level. Additionally, you should choose whether to implement Smart Bidding across single or multiple campaigns or ad groups.
If you selected CPG Optimization, select a goal before proceeding. A list of available goals will appear in a drop-down menu, such as Subscription, Trial Start or Purchase. You can define additional goals from the Goals tab under the Mobile Measurement Partner section on the left-hand side menu.
After selecting your campaign(s) or ad group(s) and CPG event, you can choose one of the 3 options as your optimization strategy:
CPI/CPG Optimization for reducing costs below the average.
Scale Up to increase reach and visibility at up to 20% above average CPI/CPG.
Specifically for the CPG mode, when selecting the strategy, you can additionally choose your preferred attribution setting: either event time or install time (with install time being the default).
This selection allows for attribution-based CPG optimization tailored to campaign objectives.
Then, depending on the chosen strategy, set your target CPI or CPG. Note that targets must adhere to specified limits above or below your average CPI/CPG.
Note that the average CPI/CPG is calculated based on the data from the last 7 days (Monday to Sunday), and the minimum and maximum target CPI can be +/- 20% from the average.
If you set a ROAS goal:
From the Smart Bidding section, choose the ROAS Optimization option.
Once the optimization mode is determined, decide whether to apply Smart Bidding at the campaign level or ad group level. Additionally, you should choose whether to implement Smart Bidding across single or multiple campaigns or ad groups.
For the ROAS mode, the only strategy available is optimization. This mode includes further options, which are ROAS 1, ROAS 7, or ROAS 14, which allow the bidding to be tailored to the specific day configuration that best suits the campaign's goals. Select your strategy to move forward to the next step.
Enter your target ROAS. The target ROAS should not exceed 5% above your current average ROAS. If the entered value is too high, you’ll see the following warning message: "For the best performance, when you hit your target ROAS, end your current smart bidding, set a new target ROAS, and restart Smart Bidding if you wish to continue optimization."
Note that the average ROAS is calculated based on the data from the last 7 days (Monday to Sunday).
Enable Smart Bidding
Turn on Smart Bidding and allow the system to start optimizing your bids based on your predefined goals.
Tips and best practices
After selecting an optimization mode (CPA, CPI, CPG, ROAS) during campaign creation, it cannot be changed later—only the bidding strategy (scale-up or optimization) within that mode can be edited.
Successful campaigns often rely on having access to a wealth of data. To benefit from Smart Bidding, rather than obtaining a high number of goals from just one keyword, it’s important that the campaign collects data across a broad spectrum of keywords. Ideally, a healthy campaign should see 30-40% of its traffic distributed among a diverse array of keywords. This approach prevents data from being overly concentrated on a single keyword, which can skew results and reduce the overall usefulness of the data.
Smart Bidding can be activated immediately for CPA-focused campaigns since it operates directly with data from Apple Search Ads and does not require MMP data. For the CPI mode, a brief waiting period is recommended to gather sufficient performance data. For CPG and ROAS modes, waiting around 20 days after starting the campaign may provide more accurate data for optimization.
Always make sure your campaign is active before you try to set up or modify Smart Bidding strategies. If your campaign or the Smart Bidding is paused, you'll need to activate both the campaign and the Smart Bidding for the tool to start working. Note that each active campaign can support only one Smart Bidding strategy.
Bid-changing automations can't be set up on campaigns with paused Smart Bidding; Smart Bidding must be stopped first. Also, activating Smart Bidding will disable existing bid automations, and a warning pop-up will notify you if there is an attempt to combine these actions.
When using Smart Bidding with CPI, CPG and ROAS modes, which rely on MMP data, it is advisable to choose the “without attribution” option. This setting excludes redownloads from the optimization process, allowing for more precise bidding in the optimization efforts.
Smart Bidding is advanced enough to assess paused keywords based on metrics like Share of Voice (SOV) and other performance indicators. If it detects potential, Smart Bidding can automatically activate these paused keywords. Although this feature can be toggled on or off, we recommend keeping it enabled for optimal results.
After Smart Bidding is set active, initial cost fluctuations are normal as the tool adapts to campaign conditions during its learning phase. It is advised to allow 2 to 3 weeks for the tool to stabilize and show improvements.
Smart Bidding will work to bring you the best results; however, here are some tips for you to make sure that you make the most out of the tool and the platform;
Monitor regularly: Check in on your campaigns periodically to see how the adjustments are performing.
Adjust goals as needed: As your campaign progresses, you may need to tweak your goals based on market conditions or campaign performance.
Use comprehensive metrics: Combine Smart Bidding with MobileAction’s analytics to get a holistic view of your campaign’s performance.
In a nutshell, Smart Bidding is one of the powerful tools on SearchAds.com that makes your campaign management easier and faster. Dive in and experience the benefits today!
If you have further questions or need assistance, don’t hesitate to contact your dedicated Customer Success Manager or get in touch with us via Intercom.