Introduction

We suggest updating the Bid Strategy Boost daily based on the anticipated uplift of Conversion Rate or Revenue-Per-Click for sales periods. This is true if sales extend beyond a day, or you expect conversion rates to increase substantially.

Controlling Spend Rate During a Sale

We recommend two ways to control spend rate during a sale using Bid Strategies: You can modify the Bid Strategy Target or you can use Boost; we recommend Boost. To learn more about Boost and other Bidding rules, check out our dedicated article.
 

• Before the sale:
   
  • Find out Revenue-Per-Click or Conversion-Rate uplift from historic sales as a percentage.
     
• On the day of the sale:
   
  • Apply the percentage uplift calculated above as a boost on the day of the sale.  Although an equivalent effect can be achieved by changing the Bid Strategy targets, most clients choose to maintain previous Bid Strategy targets and use boost for sales periods.
     
  • Remove all bid change limits. Preserving bid change limits only allows your bids to change up to a limited amount, possibly restricting a number of keywords. More information on bid change limits is available here.
     
  • Ensure campaign budgets are set appropriately for your publishers and will not be overly restrictive.
     
  • During your sales period, remove other previously excluded sales periods from the Excluded Dates section. More information on Excluded Dates is available here.
     
  • Marin Bidding runs automatically at 5 p.m. every day. For sale events, we suggest that you run bidding again a few hours before the sale. To request a bidding run outside of the usual 5 p.m. schedule, reach out to our Customer Support team.
     
  • Once the sale has begun, check hourly spend rates in your publisher accounts. Compare your spend trend in the current sale with previous sales to confirm bidding configuration is not over- or under-spending.
     
  • Assess the number of terms hitting bid caps.
     

• After the sale:
  • Add previous and latest sales periods to Excluded Dates.
  • Set bid change limits to pre-sale setting.
  • Revert Boost to the historic level.
  • Finally, request a bidding run outside of the usual 5 p.m. schedule to alter bids to historic settings.

Some Important Considerations During the Sale

• To ensure spend targets are hit, Boost needs to be appropriate and bid limits need to be relaxed.
   
• In preparation for the sale, use Forecasting to estimate changes to the daily spend through small (<20%) changes to boost settings. When spend targets exceed this, the forecasting models are of limited use: We recommend reviewing historic data to estimate a suitable uplift amount.