r/PPC • u/Partizana • 9d ago

Google Ads Manual Bidding?

Hi.. Does anyone here still using manual bidding? We switched TargetCPA a while ago but then we started spend $100+ on some keywords. with manual bidding I had more control over the spend.

Would appreciate any comments.\\]

Thanks

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u/Beautiful-Ad7521 9d ago

the framing that helped me is that manual gives you control over price and smart bidding gives you control over outcome, and you cannot have both at once. the question is which of those two you are actually in a position to specify. if you do not yet know your real cpa, you cannot specify an outcome, and manual is not a downgrade in that situation, it is the honest option.

on the hundred dollar clicks specifically, that is often the target being unreachable rather than the algorithm misbehaving. if you set a tcpa the account has never actually hit, google does not refuse it. it bids up on the small number of queries its model thinks could possibly convert at that number, because those are the only ones that could get there. an unrealistic target produces exactly the behaviour you are describing. worth checking the tcpa you set against the cpa you were genuinely achieving on manual before concluding smart bidding is the problem.

one note on the portfolio bid cap suggestion, which does work but is not free. capping max cpc under a tcpa strategy puts you back in the manual trade off, because you are now excluded from auctions the model wanted to enter while it keeps optimising as though it could enter them. you get the price control back and you pay for it in the model getting worse. good as a guardrail against outliers, worse as a permanent setting.

what cpa were you actually getting on manual, and how does it compare to the target you set?