Bidding and Budget Management
Bidding and budget management tests whether you can choose a Display bid strategy that matches the campaign goal and control spend without disrupting learning. The exam covers CPM and viewable CPM, conversion-based strategies, daily budget mechanics, and bid adjustments.
Core rules
- Target CPM sets an average cost per thousand impressions. Viewable CPM bills for viewable impressions, commonly defined for display as at least 50% of pixels visible for one continuous second.
- Conversion strategies include Maximize conversions, Target CPA, Maximize conversion value, and Target ROAS. They require conversion tracking and enough conversion volume to learn; Target ROAS also requires values.
- Manual CPC remains available for granular control but does not optimize toward conversions.
- A daily budget is an average. Google may spend up to twice the daily budget on a given day, provided monthly charges do not exceed the budget multiplied by the number of days in the month.
- Shared budgets pool spend across campaigns, but they work best when the campaigns share a goal and performance level.
- Bid adjustments can raise or lower bids for devices, locations, audiences, and ad schedules where available; check compatibility with the bid strategy.
- Frequency capping controls impressions per user, not bids or budget.
Worked example
A campaign has a $300 daily budget and a $6 viewable CPM target, with 60% expected viewability. Paid viewable impressions = $300 divided by $6 per thousand = 50,000. To obtain 50,000 viewable impressions at 60% viewability, total impressions needed = 50,000 divided by 0.60 = 83,333. If available inventory can deliver only 60,000 total impressions, the campaign will underspend. With a $6 target CPM instead, the same $300 buys 50,000 total impressions, but only about 30,000 are viewable. The reasoning is that vCPM and CPM price different units.
Traps
Treating target CPM as a hard maximum; switching to Target CPA without conversion tracking; changing budgets and bids daily during learning; ignoring a limited-by-budget status; comparing CPM and vCPM as if they were the same unit; and pooling incompatible campaigns under one shared budget.