I was dead set against automated bidding for Google Ads until last month

I ran a small local campaign for a plumber in Austin and spent 3 months manually adjusting bids every morning. Their CPA dropped by 35% after I finally let Target CPA do its thing for two weeks. Has anyone else had a tool they hated suddenly prove them wrong?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_lee1mo ago

Hated every second of automated bidding until it saved my bacon on a plumbing campaign.

tarabell1mo ago

Yeah "saved my bacon" is exactly how I'd put it. I was reading this article from Search Engine Land a few weeks back that talked about how automated bidding works better when you've got at least 30 conversions in the last 30 days. That matched my experience too - once I let Target CPA run with enough data, it started finding patterns I never would have caught manually. Your plumber campaign sounds like a perfect example of that sweet spot where the machine just beats human tweaking.

jamie9401mo ago

Gotta push back a little on the 30 conversions thing. @tarabell, that's kinda the minimum threshold but not always the magic number. I've seen Target CPA work with way less on some local campaigns. Like 15 to 20 conversions if they're consistent week over week. The pattern recognition kicks in faster when your conversion data is clean. One bad click or wrong tracking setup can mess up the whole model though. So yeah, 30 is safe but don't think you're screwed if you have less.