Fellow list member Yosef Javed wrote in to ask a question about Ad Copy Testing with Smart Bidding (shared with permission):
“I have smart bidding activated on my account across all campaigns but running into an issue with A/B testing.
It looks like I have no control with ad rotation and ads aren’t evenly distributed for an experiment.
I was trying to find a way to A/B test the ad copy in smart bidding to get rid of the bias, but no luck.
If you’ve dealt with this issue before, how did you overcome the issue of ads not being evenly distributed for campaigns with smart bidding activated?“
Here’s what I wrote back:
“thanks for your email, and that is a great question.
For campaigns using smart bidding strategies (including Enhanced CPC), ad rotation will always be set to “Optimize”, regardless of how you set their ad rotation settings in campaign settings.Note: Google might not even show you they use the “Optimize” setting. They just do.
The best way to do ad testing in Smart Bidding campaigns is to use Ad Variations.See details: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7439892?hl=en “
There’s a bigger lesson here: when running on Smart Bidding, you might lose controls that you aren’t aware of.
An example that still surprises me is the “Smart Pricing” algorithm on the Search Partner Network.
Ready to be surprised? Read this: https://nilsrooijmans.com/google-ads-script-search-partner-alerts/
– Nils