See the ‘top signals’ informing your Google Ads bidding strategies

This article has been updated to reflect that bid strategy reports are available for both portfolio and standard bid strategies.

Google’s smart bidding strategies use a host of signals to inform bids with each auction. Now, Google is starting to show which signals are driving performance to optimize bids for people more or less likely to convert.

Top signals. The signals shown might include device type, location, day of week, time of day, keywords, remarketing and Customer Match lists and potentially some other signals. You might also see combinations of signals such as time and keyword. Signals in red are less likely to convert in that strategy, while signals in green are more likely to convert.

Where to see top signals reporting. The top signals will show in the bid strategy reports. To see this for your portfolio bid strategies, go to Tools > Shared Library > Bid Strategies. Then select a portfolio strategy.

To see it from the campaign level, enable the “Bid strategy type” column and click on the link to see the bid strategy report.

Google said it will show for Target CPA and Maximize conversions on Search, but you may be able to see top signals for other strategies. The example above is just for eCPC, in fact.

Why we care. Understanding which contextual signals have particular influence on your automated bidding can give you insights into your target customers and potentially inform your strategy. For example, if you see a keyword being “down signaled,” it may just be a poor match for that particular bid strategy, or perhaps there are ad or landing page optimizations you could make to improve its likelihood to convert.

You might also see trends that can inform other marketing efforts such as email send times. The screenshot above, for example, shows weekends are a strong signal. That could be a good time to test email flights rather than on weekdays.

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About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was Third Door Media’s former Editor-in-Chief (October 2018 to December 2020), running the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.