Google has introduced a new tool, known as Enhanced CPC, which will help AdWords advertisers who don’t qualify for full CPA bidding to get better ROI by reducing the cost per conversion on their advertising campaigns.
Enhanced CPC is an automated bidding feature that will make use of the keywords’ historical conversion rates to adjust the Max CPC bids on various keywords within a campaign. The Max CPC bids will thus be based on the likelihood of an ad actually converting into a sale.
It is expected that this new feature will help clients to lower their overall CPA, while at the same time increasing the number of conversions they receive.
When a client uses several different keywords within an ad campaign, as most advertisers do, the Enhanced CPC tool will consider which of these keywords have converted well in the past. The CPC for these keywords will be hiked by a maximum of 30% over the set Max CPC. On the other hand, keywords that have not performed too well will have their CPC lowered accordingly.
Unlike CPA bidding, where the advertiser sets a target cost per acquisition and AdWords then adjusts Max CPC bids without any CPC restrictions, the average CPC that the advertisers will pay for various keywords through Enhanced CPC will remain more or less the same as before, but the likelihood of conversions will increase, thus improving the ROI and also making it easier for the client to manage Max CPC bids more easily.
The Enhanced CPC feature will take into account various factors while deciding the new CPC. In addition to adjusting the CPC based on past performance of a keyword, the tool will also recognise variations or modifications to the keywords. Factors such as the user’s location, language settings, browser and operating system will also be taken into consideration while deciding the possibility of an ad converting into a sale.
Enhanced CPC bidding will be available to all advertisers without any restrictions such as the minimum number of conversions required per month to qualify for CPA bidding.
Bid management software providers face yet another threat from this new tool. The Enhanced CPC tool has the advantage of knowing a lot more information about the searcher than any bid management system could possibly know. However, as with all Google AdWords tools, this one too will eventually be aimed at driving more business for Google AdWords – albeit by making advertising on their system more profitable for the advertisers.
