Is Manual Bidding Still Better Than Smart Bidding

kingkong2222 said:

With Google pushing automated strategies like Max Conversions and tCPA, is manual CPC still worth using for better control and lower costs? Curious what’s actually performing better across different niches.
Current Target : Pet Toy , and digital product

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This topic is actually a bit open-ended. Some advertisers in certain industries say they perform more efficiently when they are in the top position, while others choose the Conversion Value bidding strategy to generate the maximum possible revenue.The purpose of each is different. If you have a revenue-focused project, you should definitely use a conversion-based bidding strategy, but priorities need to be set. (Make sure your conversion events are working, use Customer Match for signals, and define your data as signals.)

I start my campaigns with the Maximize Conversions bidding strategy. After getting the maximum number of conversions, I switch to Conversion Value.If you are using a Manual CPC bidding strategy, I definitely recommend enabling AI Max, but make sure to apply your brand exclusions. Separate your Brand and Generic keywords into different campaigns. In fact, within each campaign, also exclude the generic keywords from the brand campaign and the keywords that can come from generic searches from the brand campaign. (Be careful: AI Max can also trigger generic searches in a Brand campaign.)

I think for pet toys manual cpc is still worth testing for more control you should compare it with max conversions and see which gives better cpa.

Yes, It depends on the niche as manual CPC gives more control while automated bidding can work better once you have enough data.

A small manual CPC test can help find which keywords perform before switching the campaign to automated bidding.

Yes, the max conversions can work well once there is enough conversion data but the manual CPC is still useful for testing and keeping tighter control over bids.