(6) Manual Bidding and Advanced Manual Bidding

(6) Manual Bidding and Advanced Manual Bidding

1. Cost Cap // Bid Cap
2. Advanced Method #1: Overbidding (bullying + delivery)
3. Advanced Method #2: Bid Caps Down-Surfing
   Advanced Method #2.2: Bid Cap Up-Surfing
4. Advanced Method #3: Accelerated Delivery with Bid Caps, Lifetime Budget and Scheduling

Cost Cap // Bid Cap

• Obviously, BFCM is the time to make the most out of Manual Bidding

Advantages of Cost Cap during BF:

• It's very open, allows you to scale slowly while ensuring delivery, so it's good for daily vertical scaling
• You can overbid, signaling to Meta that you're willing to pay A LOT, therefore ranking higher in the auction (increasing the total value)

Disadvantages of CC during BF:

• It spends whether it's profitable or not

Advantages of Bid Cap (BC) during BF:

• Setting a low bid cap = Less risk, it will spend if it promises profitability, and if it can't find it, it won't spend
• Setting a high bid cap, you can overbid, signaling to Meta that you're willing to pay A LOT and rank higher in the auction (increasing the total value)

Disadvantages of BC during BF:

• It's more demanding, and you may not get any delivery or spend, so you have to manually manipulate the bid

What if my historical winning CC or BC isn't spending?

• You can increase it manually
• MAXIMUM 20%, because otherwise, it will re-enter the learning phase

Manual Bidding Black Friday ‘23

Manage it in a similar way than evergreen, remember to build it during the black week.

Advanced Method #1: Overbidding (bullying + delivery)

• As we’ve seen, overbidding CC = Lower CPM
  That’s already a huge advantage
  
• But the main thing is bullying your competitors with your top performing assets (creative + landing + offer) and with a very high Cost Cap

• ONLY with winning assets

Usually in evergreen we test 3 cost caps

• Underbidding (<AOV)
• Medium (=AOV)
• Overbidding (>AOV)

This is good, keep on doing it and go to Black Friday with your winning cost caps and bid caps.

BUT in this specific scenario, it makes sense to try to directly scale horizontally into, for example, a CBO with a cost cap of 100.

***During the Black Week: Test what’s the highest cost cap you can put while staying profitable, honestly, even if it’s 200.

Can we do the same with bid caps? Yes, I will. Diversification.

Advanced Method #2: Bid Cap Down-Surfing

Example:

• You have 3 winning creatives (ABO)
• You can have a ROAS of 3 with a cost per purchase of 30
• You create a new CBO campaign,
• You start overbidding
• “CBO_(3 winners)_BidCap100”
• The goal is to down-surf to bid cap 30

Validate that you have a good ROAS and after 48 hours:

• Decrease the bid 10-20% every day
• Day 1: 90
• Day 2: 75
• Day 3: 60
• Day 4: 50 (ROAS 1.8)
• Day 5: 40 (ROAS 2.25)
• Day 6: 32 (ROAS 3)

By day 6, you have reached your CPA.

*This method is not perfect, at some point you’ll find struggles, but the idea is to find the perfect point, the sweet spot, where you can have delivery and spending, but keep a high ROAS.

Advanced Method #2.2: Bid Cap Up-Surfing

Example:

• You have 3 winning creatives (ABO)
• You can have a ROAS of 3 with a cost per purchase of 30
  (AOV 90)
• You create a new CBO campaign,
• You start underbidding
• “CBO_(3 winners)_BidCap30”
• At a high budget, for example 1000€-10,000€

Of course this will not spend any money in the first 24h.

After 24h, increase the bid by 20%

• “CBO_(3 winners)_BidCap36”
• At this point it might spend 200-400€

Play with the bid,

• “CBO_(3 winners)_BidCap38”
• At this point it might spend 700€

*This method is not perfect, at some point you’ll find struggles, but the idea is to find the perfect point, the sweet spot, where you can have delivery and spending, but keep a high ROAS.

Karl:
→ ABO test (10x ad sets, BC: 40,41,(...),50)
→ Find which ad set gets delivery = Bid Cap 45
→ Duplicate winning BC45, 10k CBO, surf the bid throughout the day
→ If my daily wave in Shopify is 6pm-10pm

→ 6pm: raise the bid by 2
→ 6:30pm: raise the bid by 2
(...)
→ 8pm: raise the bid by 2

Once the sales peak (wave) is over, downscale the bid by less than 20%.

Advanced Method #3: Accelerated Delivery with Bid Caps, Lifetime Budget and Scheduling

The goal:

• Spend as much money as possible (accelerated)
• During the best hours of your day (historically)
• While guaranteeing profitability (bid cap)

Of course this is risky, especially if it spends the money at 2am. That’s the reason why we need to schedule WHEN meta is spending our money.

I want to spend a lot, yes, but during the best historical hours of my day,

• 4pm to 10pm
• We could do 3pm to 11pm to maximize chances of success and more hours of delivery

• As I mentioned last week, this is still to be figured out fully
• I will also test this with overbidding cost caps, but not a 10,000€ lifetime budget, more like a 1000€ lifetime budget to be spent in 3 days

________

Execution

• 3 to 5 winning ads
• CBO, Bid Cap, Accelerated Delivery, Lifetime Budget
• Ad set → Schedule delivery for top hours of the day

• If you start at a low bid cap, you can put a high lifetime budget and then surf the bid cap UP
  (Low bid cap = ROAS 3)
  
• If you start at a high bid cap, you can put a lower lifetime budget and then surf the bid down or keep it overbidding

_____

Doubt

• Black Week: i have a winning ad (split image, BF message)
• Duplicate and test 2 overbidding cost caps
  If AOV: 80
  Test CC100
  Test CC130