Beginning August 17th, Google ended its tactic of suppressing bids on budget-limited campaigns. This had previously caused Smart Bidding to frequently miss (and usually overachieve) ROAS targets. Now that the dust has settled, it’s critical to ask not only what Google really did here, but also how advertisers behaved and how campaign performance changed. Join Mike Ryan for an empirical post-mortem analyzing aggregated performance data across millions in ecommerce spend to see how ROAS and CPC evolved, and to dissect how advertisers responded – from loosening budget caps or panic-adjusting tROAS targets to suffering through systemic "limited by budget" bottlenecks.
In the end he’ll examine: was this merely a revenue maximizing strategy for Google, or a bitter medicine for advertisers? And whether you did, or did not, make a change on August 17th – what you should do next?
In today's session you will learn:
- Why this change was made, and what happened under the hood when Google removed its bidding safety cushions
- How ecommerce advertisers responded, including shifts in ROAS targets and spend increases
- What happened next to metrics including impression share, CPC, and ROAS
- What should ecommerce advertisers make of this new normal headed into Q4?