The current AdWords system only allows you to use one type of bidding strategy per campaign. This can prove frustrating if you wish to have branding and lead generation ad groups in the same campaign. This forces you to separate your ad groups into multiple campaigns if you want to bid aggressively for top positions in the branding ad groups using manual bidding, and more conservatively in the lead generation ad groups using conversion optimizer.

Google has announced Flexible campaigns in an effort to remedy this. Flexible campaigns will be located in the Shared Library of the AdWords interface and once created will allow advertisers to specify their bidding strategy at the keyword, ad group, or campaign level



Included with the update to bidding strategies is a new form of bidding called “Target Search Page Location”. This strategy automatically bids for your ads to reach the top of the page, or onto the first page of search results. As a part of the announcement, Google provided the following table as a guide to the different automatic bidding strategies that will be available with Flexible bids:



With flexible bidding strategies, Google has continued its attempt to reduce the number of campaigns that advertisers have in their accounts, which it started with the attempt to eradicate separate device and geography-specific campaigns with the initial Enhanced Campaign rollout. While these changes to account setup are aimed at streamlining the process of running and managing AdWords campaigns, they will also make individual campaigns more complex. The combination of geographic bid adjustments, device preference targeting and bidding, and now flexible bid strategies will result in a general trend towards accounts having smaller numbers of highly complex campaigns. Making individual campaigns more intricate in the way they are set up will mean that anyone looking to make changes to an AdWords account will need to be more thorough than ever before in assessing the structure and settings of the campaigns before evaluating performance and making changes to structure, settings, keywords, bids, or ad copy.


About the Author
Daniel Mew is a Performance Media Strategist at Mediative, with responsibilities including developing client’s digital marketing strategies across major PPC networks, analyzing account performance, and implementing recommendations. Daniel is continually searching for new developments that will enable clients to gain a competitive advantage and maximise the return on investment of their digital marketing campaigns. Originally hailing from the UK, where he graduated from Swansea University with an MSc. in Business Management, Daniel moved to Canada in 2010 where he has worked in digital marketing for clients of all sizes across a wide range of industries.