What is the issue?

When using Position-Based Bidding as your bidding model, you may notice that despite the fact that your position is higher than its target, bids are still being increased.

This issue most commonly occurs when you are also using the platform’s Boost feature in combination with Position-Based Bidding.

What causes the issue?

The problem happens when a keyword does not have enough data to generate bid/position models.

In this case, the platform defaults to decreasing your bid by 0.03 (provided the average position is above the target range). However, if you also have Boost set at folder level, it will be applied on top of the Position-Based Bid. This can actually lead to bids being increased rather than decreased.

For example, consider the following scenario:
 

• Folder-level boost is set at 30%.
   
• Folder position target is set to a range of 5 – 7.
   
• A keyword has a bid of 0.2 and an average position of 3.
   

In this scenario, the platform would calculate the bid as (0.2 – 0.03)*(1+30%) = 0.22. The result of this is that each day the bid would increase unless the average position reaches the target range.

How to fix the issue

To solve this problem, we recommend that you set folder Boost to zero when using Position-Based Bidding.

If required, you can use Boost if you want short bursts of spend without having to change your position targets.