Which bidding strategy should an advertiser choose in order to meet a campaign goal of visibility?

Visibility is one of the prime goals for which marketers run online advertising campaigns.

They find a big support in Google Ads that offers different types of bidding strategies.

These strategies are designed keeping specific results in mind.

Some of the objectives of the campaigns can be – an increase in the number of clicks, gaining more impressions, and achieving a higher rate of conversions.

These campaigns may require the marketer to bid manually or choose automatic bidding strategy.

Let’s understand first the types of objectives marketers are required to achieve and the bidding strategies that complement these objectives.

Generating or increasing traffic to the website

Generating traffic means that the searchers click on the website link.

Thus, the related campaign aims to increase the number of clicks.

This can be a starting point for achieving a greater number of leads.

The advertisers can choose Cost-per-Click as the bidding strategy for achieving more clicks. 

Traffic is an effective determiner of an increase in the visibility of the website.

Thus, when the campaign goal is visibility with more effective results, concentrating on traffic generation serves the bidding objective better. 

Interestingly, cost per click strategy was used offline by advertisers who needed to choose magazines for placing ads to reach their intended audience.

They used demographic targeting and applied research to pick the magazines whose readers were expected to be more interested in their products.

Thus, they achieved better results in terms of inquiries regarding the product.

The same principle is used in a cost-per-click bidding strategy in an online scenario. 

In the cost-per-click bidding strategy, the advertisers fix the amount they pay for ads and divide it by the number of clicks achieved.

It shows the effectiveness of a campaign and helps them make strategic decisions regarding the next campaign or move to strategies that enhance penetration.

Thus, while improving the traffic size, the advertisers achieve the objective of enhancing visibility as well.

The cost-per-click is one of the most used strategies that advertisers wield because of the advantages it offers and the support that it offers for understanding the advertising’s outcomes.

The average CPC in Google Ads for Search Network varies between $2 to $4 and that on the Display Network is further low, which is less than $1.

Industries like legal services, dental services, and the home grooming sector have spent an average of $6 to $9. (Source: WordStream). 

How CPC bidding strategy is applied

Though not meant for all campaigns, manual CPC is one of the strategies that advertisers find useful.

It is effective for brand campaigns where the brand-based searches lead to the advertiser’s site instead of the competitors.

Another category that makes a good case for using manual CPC is low-volume keywords.

This strategy fits low-budget campaigns and can be made more effective by tweaking Smart Bidding when the 100 most prospective searchers are identified by Google. 

Other strategies used for maximizing results from CPC spend are:

• Dayparting: where you input a specific time of the day for displaying ads,
• Geotargeting: choosing locations where you want ads to display
• Device targeting: displaying ads on those devices from where maximum positive response is received.

Increase video views and ad impressions

Videos are the most consumed content on the internet in present times.

As reported in research conducted by Akamai Technologies, about 85% of the traffic on the internet is generated by videos.

Thus, video ads are a powerful source for enhancing visibility.

The importance of video ads can also be gauged from the fact that any search result page shows the videos above other links.

To tap the unmatched potential of videos, marketers can choose cost-per-view (CPV) and cost-per-thousand viewable impressions (vCPM) bidding strategies.

CPV for video campaigns means that the marketers pay for ads that the audience watches for at least 30 seconds.

This bidding strategy is specially designed for video ads.

The marketers analyze the video and apply tactics so that the video ad grabs the attention of the target users. 

Spending on CPV by various industries differs from country to country.

For instance, sectors like CBD, Outdoors, and Luxury Goods & Jewellery are the top spenders on CPV in the US market, according to Statista.

The expenditure has varied from $147 to $157 in these industries. 

The cost-per-thousand viewable impressions (vCPM) comes into picture when the 50% of ad content is displayed on screen for 1 second or more.

The one-second benchmark is applicable for Display Ads while the video ads are considered viewable when the playtime recorded of 50% of the ad is 2 seconds and more.

So, in this bidding strategy, the marketer is paying for a thousand viewable impressions. 

vCPM and CPV should be analyzed keeping other metrics like Click-through rate (CTR) and conversions in consideration.

This way the marketers come to know how effectively the ad budget has been used for gaining traction among the intended masses.

Average vCPM spend varies depending upon the platform chosen.

The industry-wise top average spenders on vCPM for 2022-23 were reported as (Source: Semrush):

Food Delivery: $7.63

Travel: $7.10

Finance: $6.52

Pets: $6.50

So, when the product or service is better explained through video ads, the marketers need to focus on bidding strategies like vCPM and CPV to achieve their plans.

The expenditure on these bids can yield a better RoAS when the conversion rate is high.

When used for promoting an online shop, the conversion rate matters most significantly.

Increase product or brand consideration

Boosting product or brand consideration is achieved by building brand awareness.

Creating brand awareness is the prime objective of all marketing campaigns.

It is achieved by being present where the prospective customers are, or in other words, by achieving better visibility.

A prospective customer more aware of the brand is most likely to talk about it to others, and place and repeat orders.

While designing an ad campaign for brand awareness, the marketers can opt for a CPV (CPV) or cost per mille (CPM) bidding strategy.

CPM allows running the advertising campaign at a controlled cost.

Market leaders like Microsoft have developed an Audience Network that gives a filtered space to place ads.

It eases reaching the target users who are spending time on platforms like Outlook, Microsoft Edge, MSN, etc.

Thus, if the intended audience of the advertisers and users of Microsoft platforms match, the advertising efforts result in better brand awareness leading to better engagement. 

So, it requires an in-depth browser behavior and social media usage study to design an effective CPV and CPM strategy.

The average CPM spend on other platforms like Google Display Ads, Facebook Ads, and Google Search Ads is found to be approx. $3, $8.60, and $38.40 respectively. (Source: Outbrain)

Visibility is the parameter on which the number of impressions, views, and clicks depend.

The CPM bidding strategy proves to be more effective when visibility is the advertising campaign’s goal.

It helps determine the effectiveness of ad placement and gives a clear picture of the devices and platforms from where the best response to the ads is received.

However, a downside to the CPM strategy is that it proves to be costlier sometimes.

For instance, if out of 1000 impressions received, only 10 take an action or buy the product, the conversion rate is very low.

Thus, the ROAS value may not be so encouraging.

Still, it is a good bid strategy as the results may be received in the long run with a consistent approach and targeted placement of ads.

Achieving the top position or any other place on the search page

Advertisers feel having hit the bull’s eye when their ads display on the absolute top of the page.

This position holds a lot of importance as the searchers with shorter attention spans are quite likely not to scroll below and click on the first option that appears.

Also, this position is most likely to receive the most impressions.

Thus, when the aim is to be visible at the top of the search results and the marketers are clear about how many impressions they intend to achieve, they can take the help of the Target Impression Share bidding strategy.

Using the target impression share bid strategy, the marketers control the frequency of appearance of the ads on display networks and Google Ads.

They achieve the desired frequency by predetermining the target share of impressions from the total impressions available. 

Target impression share can deliver desired results in terms of visibility, but marketers must be ready to pay a premium for such achievement.

A higher target impression share can result in the expansion of reach, but to attain sustainability, the marketers must work out the advertising goal, target keywords, budget, and competition.

These parameters differ from business to business, and the results are received in the percentage of impressions scored.

More about Target Impression Share (TIS) Strategy

The target impression share strategy serves the need to achieve better visibility.

However, it works better when the focus is put on Phrase Match or Exact Match.

The brands that appear as a result of these matches are those that are highly relevant.

Thus, riding on the plus of high relevance, this bid strategy gives a better push to the business.

Also, as a result of better relevance, the business gets a better CPC than the competitors. 

Does it work for those businesses too which are not highly relevant as compared to competitors? Well, the answer is yes, but on the condition of bidding more aggressively.

Also, the marketer should set the ROAS and CPA more intelligently first and then proceed to obtain the best results from the TIS strategy.

Another thing worth understanding is that the Target Impression Share strategy is meant largely for the branded search campaigns.

So, if you are a local seller having stock of branded shoes and want to appear on the top of the results, you must choose Exact Match mentioning the brand name for which you are competing for the share of impressions.

In this way, you will be using your entire budget to achieve the desired number of impressions and a profitable position in the search rank.

The steps involved in setting a target impression strategy bid are:

Select the desired location of ads on the search page.

Options available are – at the absolute top of the results page, top of the results page, and anywhere on the results page.

Remember, the higher the position of the ad sought after, the bigger the bid amount will be.

All of it sounds crisp but does involve a detailed study of keywords to target, competitor analysis, and ad variations testing.

Select the percentage of impressions to achieve: Keep in mind the advertising goals, budget, and competitiveness of the market while deciding the good percentage to target.

You can cut the percentage of impressions if the ads designed are highly relevant to keywords.

So, research well and then select the percentage for maximum budget utilization.

Select maximum CPC limit: The TIS strategy, when done right, does lead to an increase in clicks.

Hence, the CPC bid comes into the picture while setting TIS expenditure.

The best results are achieved when the CPC limit is neither too high nor too low. 

It is possible to adjust the CPC bid limit to achieve the TIS target.

The adjustments are to be made based on the impression share received and the average CPC of a few weeks.

A simple rule to follow while setting the CPC limit is to take the average of the last 30-day CPC for the campaign and then almost double it.

This helps get a fairly good CPC bid which will not be ignored by Google.

To conclude,

Choosing a bidding strategy for the campaigns that aim at achieving visibility requires analysis of the market, competition, advertising budget, etc.

The Google ads consultant gain an understanding of the bid requirement and design campaigns to reach customers where they hang out usually.

By selecting aims like increasing impressions, gaining traffic, increasing video views, etc., the relevant bidding strategy can be applied.

So, be familiar with the advertising trends, new updates, and competition, and then choose the bidding strategy that helps meet multiple motives at limited cost.