Changes to Microsoft Ads Engine Bid Strategies

Microsoft is announcing a bidding approach shift designed to help advertisers drive more value from campaigns that are using manual bidding. By April 30, 2021, all campaigns that use manual bid strategies will be automatically opted into using Enhanced CPC (eCPC), which will become the default bid strategy for all existing Search, Shopping, and Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) campaigns not yet on one of their automated bidding strategies.

Benefits of Enhanced Manual Bidding (from Microsoft Ads)

As part of this announcement, Microsoft stated that “manual bidding strategies will soon work smarter with Enhanced CPC (eCPC) or other automated bidding strategies.” Some of the benefits include:     

• More sophisticated bidding optimizations. The bids you will continue to be the primary base in the eCPC bidding strategy, enhanced in real-time auctions to maximize business KPIs.

• Real-time insights. Take action on the keywords contributing most to your growth metrics in the moments when they’re surging.

• Modify bidding goals to fit your business needs. Adjust your eCPC settings to optimize toward Clicks, Conversions, Target CPA, or Target ROAS.

Migration Timeline

Get Ready for Enhanced Manual Bidding Migration

If you are looking into other strategies beyond eCPC, consider: 

• Reviewing your goals and testing strategies. Work along with your team to identify priorities. 

• Running an A/B test to evaluate and optimize your campaign performance. Campaign Experiments provide accurate testing for search campaigns.

• Determining ideal automated bidding strategies. Once you do so, it is time to revise which of your campaigns aren’t yet using automated bidding strategies.   

As automated bidding strategies evolve, it is necessary to keep testing to make sure your campaigns are optimized. Rise is ready to advise you in every step of your PPC planning.