Google

Store visits now available for Google Ads smart bidding optimization

Advertisers who have store visits measurement in their Google Ads accounts can now incorporate store visits data in their smart bidding strategies.

Why we should care. The update allows stores with physical locations to optimize with and for foot traffic in addition to online conversions with smart bidding. Smart bidding strategies use machine learning aimed at predicting when a conversion action is most likely and adjust bids at the time of auction accordingly.

Search and shopping. Store visits in smart bidding is now available to all advertisers in Search and Shopping campaigns.

How to implement. Advertisers can incorporate store visits conversions into smart bidding at the account level, but many will prefer to test it out at the campaign level first. The relatively new campaign-level conversion action setting allows you to do that in Search campaigns. If you’re interested in this for Shopping campaigns, you’ll have to contact your Google Ads rep at this point.

For background on Google’s store visits measurement works, see: How Google AdWords Measures Store Visits and Google’s Surojit Chatterjee: Here’s Why You Should Trust AdWords Estimated Store Visits.

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Conversion marketing Conversion rate optimization Google Google Ads Machine learning Retail Surojit Chatterjee
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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 wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, MarTech 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.