Mar 2, 2022

Google Ads Bid Simulator: Giving you Better Results

When you think of the word ‘bidding,’ you might think about giving offers for an object of significant value. When it comes to Google Ads, it’s much the same way with, though its bid adjustments are complicated. First, you need to account for varied factors like current performance, budget, and PPC campaign goals. There’s no set formula, but there are plenty of tools that can help you predict changes in your campaign. We once talked about Google AdWords Auction. So now, a Paid Marketing tool we’ll be focusing on is the Google Ads Bid Simulator, which can boost the effectiveness of your ad campaign’s performance.

What’s a Bid Simulator?

Bid Simulators can help you calculate how much your ads’ prices will affect their performance throughout the week. So during ad auctions, the Bid Simulator can get search and network data — things like Keyword Traffic, Quality Score, and even competition.

When preparing to make a bid, you have to establish a starting bid and project its impact on your performance. Not only that, you have to predict how you can adjust your bids over time. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to do manually, as several factors can impact your ads in ways that aren’t easy to predict.

A Bid Simulator can help you remove the uncertainty! Plus, you can switch the settings around to check how other variables will influence your ad performance. These ‘other variables’ can include competitor ads and their bids.

A Bid Simulator is perfect if you want to ask questions like:

How low can I bid on a keyword without sacrificing my ad position?
How much should I pay to improve my ad position?
Should I alter my ad spend? And for which keywords?
How can I boost website traffic without spending too much?

The data from a Bid Simulator helps you strike a balance between your ads and your budget. Also, they can help you predict changes in ad performance to prepare you for potential outcomes. There are two types: the Manual Simulator and the Smart Bidding Simulator.

Overall, the Bid Simulator can give insight into how bids affect ad campaign performance over the week. As a result, they take off some of the pressure of handling PPC Campaigns. In addition to Google, Bing and Facebook have bid simulators. These are the Bid Landscape and Estimated Daily Results, respectively.

Google Ads Bid Simulator

Google understands that some risks are unnecessary, so they created the Bid Simulator tool. It’s an excellent way to understand the factors around your Google Advertisement and how they might affect it. Such factors include impressions, conversions, clicks, cost, and more! In addition, you can see what it’ll cost to improve your ad position.

So Google’s Simulator tool gets ad auction data from the past week and analyzes it. The simulation considers Keyword Traffic, Competition, and other ad auction data. Simulations also account for Google Ads’ active campaign bid adjustments.

Thus, the tool will calculate things like:

How many impressions your advertisement could show;
The number of clicks it could have received, should they have those impressions;
The potential cost of the clicks; and
The conversion rate.

The benefits of using the Google Ads Bid Simulator

Google recommends advertisers use bid simulators for several reasons. Here they are:

Check bid changes. You can see changes in aggregates and models.
Scale bids. It gives insight into what’ll happen if you scale your bids up or down.
Google alerts you to budget increases. You will also know whether to increase your budget and how much.
Gives predictions. Google can provide previews on the effect of bid changes.

Note that the Simulator tool can’t give you a concrete outcome. Still, you can learn about potential consequences and adjust your campaign strategies. So, Google’s Bid Simulator tool is indispensable for anticipating what might happen in your campaigns.

Thus, the Bid Simulator tool can evaluate your Google Ads performance and predict outcomes depending on your settings. In turn, these outcomes help you make informed decisions for future auctions.

How to use Google Ads Bid Simulator to check performance results

Before making changes to your ad campaign simulator, you need to know the allowable campaign types. These include:

Search;
Display; and
Search with Display opt-in campaigns.

Where can you find Google’s Bid Simulator?

The Bid Simulator is found in different areas, depending on whether it’s for a campaign, an ad-group, or a portfolio bid strategy. According to Google, here’s how you can find them:

First, click on your desired section (ex. Campaigns, Ad groups, etc.)
Then, select the Bid Simulator icon for Ad groups and Campaigns. As for the portfolio strategy, click on the Tool icon!

- For Ad Groups, it’s in the performance report in either Strategy target CPA or Strategy target ROAS.
- For Campaigns, the icon is in the Budget column
- Lastly, for the portfolio, after clicking the Tool icon, click Bid strategies under the Shared library.

The varied types of bidding simulators

There are various bidding simulators, and each has different metrics to track. Of course, there are three main types of metrics: Conversions, Conversion Value, and Clicks.

Firstly, if you’re focusing on Conversions, you can use simulators at various levels. It’s beneficial when using target Cost Per Action or CPA or conversion strategies. Also, if you’re using a target Return On Ad Spend or ROAS, Conversion Value must be vital to you. You may also use simulators as with Conversions. Lastly, if you want Clicks, you have to maximize clicks, and a simulator can help you find the best strategy to achieve it.

What bid simulators can you use to make adjustments on Google Ads?

Traditional or Regular Bid Simulator. The Traditional Bid Simulator can show changes in an ad’s maximum CPC or Cost-Per-Click bid. Of course, this price will affect ads’ clicks, impressions, and conversion value.
Campaign Bid Simulator. This one can show you how bid changes can impact campaign performance.
Shopping Ads or Shopping Campaigns Simulator. This simulator can tell how bid changes will affect the ad performance of a specific product.
Video Campaigns Bid Simulator. This simulator shows changes in your maximum CVP or Cost-Per-View and how it affects video campaigns over the week.
Hotel Campaigns Bid Simulator. It’ll indicate the effects of the campaign’s maximum CPC or max CPC percentage on your hotel group.
Device Bid Adjustment Simulator. You can see how your campaign performance will go depending on what device users are on. This simulator works only for campaigns that have ads on various devices.
Call Bid Adjustment Simulator. This should show how changing the bid affects the call interaction’s performance.

Gear up to make informed campaign changes with Bid Simulators!

Simulator tools help advertisers discover helpful information about their bids. In Google’s words, the simulator will “help you research [various] scenarios.” So, it helps find the potential impact of their bid on advertising results and how altering them could affect their campaigns. The Google Ads Bid Simulator tool gets advertising data from auctions to see potential ad performance and bid adjustments.

There are plenty of Bid Simulator types, including simulators for shopping ads. You can also check out your video and hotel campaigns! There are also bid simulators to check on users’ devices and call interactions. If you need any help with bidding, you can look to PPC Management Services.

About Axel May Rivera

Axel is an avid fan of many dramas and songs. She is always eager to explore and discover more when it comes to movies and entertainment, especially in Korean and Filipino culture. In her free time, she enjoys reading books and playing badminton.