How you set up your bids in your search advertising campaign can make or break its the campaign's ability to deliver successful results. On the the Yahoo! Bing Network, it is recommended to set an explicit bid for each keyword match type. Here's how to implement this effectively.
Success with Explicit Bids
Match types are inclusive, meaning that if you bid on “broad match,” you will also be bidding on “match to phrase” or “exact match” queries for that term.
The best practice is to assign a distinct bid for each match type, which is referred to as an “explicit bid.” For new terms, set exact bids to at least $0.40 (to pass the minimum bid threshold), phrase bids at 74% of exact bids, and broad bids at 71% of exact bids.1 However, bids should be based on the value of each match type in your particular campaign. The match type that shows the strongest performance, usually exact match, should have the highest bid.
Without setting explicit bids, your keyword match types may inherit bids from the less restrictive match types, which is often referred to as “implicit bids.” For example, if you set a bid only for the broad match type of a keyword, the phrase and exact versions will use the same bid.
What if I want to separate each match type into a separate ad group?
For advertisers who use some third-party tools or who like to test unique ad copy for each match type, it may be necessary to separate each match type in its own ad group. But this can cause duplicates if not managed correctly, which can have a negative effect on ad quality:
This can be avoided by using exact and phrase-match negatives in a strategy called “Triplication with Match-Type Negatives,” which is set up this way:
- In the “exact” ad group, set the bid based on your objectives.
- In the “phrase” ad group, set the phrase bid to 78% of the exact bid, and implement exact negative keywords. This will block exact matches from serving and will only serve to search queries based on phrase match.
- In the “broad” ad group, set the broad bid to 74% of the exact bid, and implement phrase negative keywords. This will block exact and phrase matches from serving and will only serve broad matches.
It is recommended to put ad groups for each match type in separate campaigns, but be sure that the “exact” campaign has the highest budget to insure it doesn’t go into “budget pause” status. Once these campaigns are set up, continue to review and optimize bids based on match-type performance.
Why would I want to implement and manage all these explicit bids?
Advertisers managed by Yahoo!’s account teams have seen notable improvements after implementing explicit bidding:
- One telecommunications advertiser that stopped relying on implicit bids saw a drastic reduction in incorrect traffic distribution as well as almost immediate performance improvements.
- An online media advertiser implemented explicit bids and saw month-over-month improvements, including a 124% increase in clicks and a 20% drop in CPCs.
1Based on internal Microsoft and Yahoo! conversion data and should only only be used as guidance.