Google announced the launch of new automated bidding tools for setting performance targets in AdWords. These are target opt-in recommendations and the Target CPA Simulator.

As the company notes, automated bidding is key to “setting smart bids at scale and maximizing conversions or revenue from your spend.” Google explains the new tools in a Google+ post:

New target opt-in recommendations help you select the right performance target when first setting up an automated bid strategy for target CPA or target ROAS . After you’ve chosen which campaigns to apply a bid strategy to, we’ll recommend a performance target based on your actual CPA or ROAS performance from the past few weeks. This helps you maintain CPA or ROAS performance while the automated bid strategy optimizes to increase conversions or revenue at that similar target.

We’re also introducing the Target CPA Simulator to help you estimate the conversion impact of adjusting your target CPA. We first announced this feature during the AdWords livestream 2015 and it’s now fully available to all advertisers. Using this, you can see how many conversions you might lose by decreasing your target CPA or conversely, how increasing your target could unlock additional conversion opportunity.

Say, for example, you have a current target CPA of $9 and drove about 740 conversions in the past week. Using the Target CPA Simulator, you can see that with a target CPA of $11.30, you might have generated about 280 incremental conversions.

Last week, Google launched new engagement columns in reporting for Lightbox ads in AdWords and announced the launch of a new email newsletter to give advertisers updates on paid search best practices.

Via Search Engine Land

Image via Google