Having successful bid strategies is paramount to successful campaigns. To help you monitor the performance of your bid strategies, and identify and fix potential issues, we’re introducing a helpful health panel with details and recommendations for fixes, a timeline to show when issues start and end, and icons representing issue severity in the new bid strategies Overview page.

Quickly uncover issues affecting your bid strategy

It can sometimes be challenging to identify the issues that are holding back your bid strategies. That's why the bid strategies Overviews page will now automatically surface those issues and help you monitor any fixes you decide to apply.

Under the performance summary graph, you’ll now see a timeline highlighting days when an issue was detected and when a fix was applied. For example, if you’ve applied a fix to increase the max bid limit for your bid strategy, you can now see when that fix was made and monitor its impact on performance.

Easily see the issues affecting your bid strategy

Diagnose your bid strategy, at a glance

New icons throughout the bid strategies page will help you identify the severity of detected issues, status of automated fixes, and when your bid strategy is learning. For example, if a small number of keywords are hitting the max bid limit, you’ll see the minor issues icon:

 

However, if a large number of keywords are hitting the max bid limit, the critical issues icon will show:

 

These icons let you quickly see the severity of all your issues and make it easy to prioritize the ones you should fix first. You can also see a brief summary of all the issues detected on a particular day by hovering over the icon in the performance summary graph.

Take action to improve performance

When bid strategy issues are detected, you’ll want to address them quickly to minimize potential negative impact. The new health panel provides more information about the issues affecting your bid strategy and what you can do to fix them. For each message that’s displayed, you’ll see an overview of the issue, and where possible, the estimated impact on conversions, revenue and spend, as well as links to learn more or apply an automatic fix.

For example, if your campaign budgets are capped, you may see a message with details about the issue and a recommendation to increase daily budgets to drive additional sales. With one click, you can automatically apply the recommendation and move on to the next one.

The health panel provides details about issues and, where applicable, automatic fixes

Merkle | Periscopix, a London-based performance marketing agency, has been using these new features to successfully monitor their bid strategies:

"I found the DoubleClick bid strategy health feature a definite time-saver, and can envision it becoming the first step for the effective management of bid strategies. It allows for the quick and effective diagnosis of both critical and minor strategy issues, and provides meaningful recommendations and insights that are immediately actionable within a few clicks” - Ruaridh Stewart, Senior PPC Account Manager, Merkle | Periscopix
 

You can learn more about monitoring the health and performance of your bid strategies in the DoubleClick Help Center.

Posted by Tris Southey
Product Manager, DoubleClick Search