Remarketing Lists For Search Ads Can Now Use Conversion-Based Automated Bid Strategies In AdWords

Now when you enable AdWords conversion-based automated bid strategies in your Remarketing Lists For Search Ads campaigns, the predicted conversion performance of those remarketing lists will influence the bidding.

Google announced on its Google+ page that remarketing list performance is now among the real-time signals such as location, browser, time of day that affect automated bid strategies in AdWords.

Conversion Optimizer, target CPA and target ROAS automated bid strategies will each take into consideration the conversion performance of your RLSA lists and modify the bids when visitors that are on those lists search on one of your keywords. From the help center article:

When you add a remarketing list to an ad group using automated bidding, you’re telling the bid strategy which people are most important to you. This helps the strategy optimize your bids and get you more conversions.

For example, you’d want to bid more for someone who has visited your site twice, if you know that those visitors are more likely to convert (be it a download, email sign-up or high-consideration purchase) on the third visit.

When you set up a list for those repeat visitors, and use Conversion Optimizer, for example, the strategy will automatically adjust bids on visitors that are on that list based on projected lifts in conversion rates. If the projection looks positive, the bidding strategy will raise the bid, and vice versa if conversion estimates aren’t in line with the strategy.

Conversion Optimizer, target CPA and target ROAS are the only bid strategies that will automatically adjust bids on RLSA. If you use other strategies with remarketing lists, the manual bid modifier associated with the list will be used. Similarly, bids placed by the three conversion-based strategies will override any manual bid modifiers in the ad group.