Your search advertising campaign will benefit if you understand bidding, especially if you can’t see your ads when you search for your keywords. If that's the case, don’t just increase your bids. One of the best ways to get to the top is to improve your ad’s click-through rate.
In Microsoft Advertising adCenter, you bid in any of four ways:
- Enter a bid for all keywords.
- Enter separate bids for all Content Ads keywords and all search ad keywords.
- Change the bids for individual keywords.
- Estimate the bids needed for each keyword to reach average position.
For more information, you can also watch the video tutorial on bidding.
Bidding best practices
To get the most out of your budget, make sure to closely monitor your keywords for positioning, and set your reports to run frequently. You'll want to prioritize the keywords that bring you the most traffic and are most relevant to your products and services.
When you first begin bidding, Microsoft Advertising adCenter will suggest bids for you. Use them as a guide, then review and adjust accordingly after one week.
Focusing on specific phrases and keywords, and on your demographic, will help you target your customers. For example, a business in Seattle that offers services to certain areas might use those neighborhood names as keywords. Or, you can try incremental bidding to improve your chances of reaching your target demographic.
Actual cost per click
When someone clicks your ad, the actual cost per click is deducted from your campaign budget. The actual cost per click for each keyword varies based on the following:
- Your bid on a keyword. If you are not using incremental bids, your keyword bid is the maximum amount you can be charged for a click.
- Other advertisers' bids for the same keyword. In online advertising, you pay just $.01 more than the next-highest bidder, all other factors being equal. As a result, you could possibly pay less than your bid amount. (Microsoft Advertising adCenter does not disclose what other advertisers are bidding.)
- Incremental bids to target customers by time of day, gender or other target criteria. If a customer who matches one or more of your target criteria clicks your ad, you also pay the amount of your corresponding incremental bids.
Price estimation
Microsoft Advertising adCenter has a built-in price estimation tool that can help you plan your keyword bids and budgets. It displays the estimated ad position and the estimated keyword cost for a particular bid. You can apply different base bids to keywords and see estimates of how keyword performance may change. You can estimate average cost per click (CPC), ad position, and other performance metrics.
Remember that these are only estimates. Changing bids for a keyword can alter its behavior, sometimes substantially.
