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Suggested Bids for Onsite Sponsored Products Line Items
Suggested Bids is an intelligent tool that provides CPC Bid recommendations for Onsite Sponsored Products line items, based on the winning bids for products that are similar to your line item’s SKUs. A suggested bid range is displayed in the Bid section (step 3) of the line item setup workflow.
Once the line item goes live, the suggested range will also be displayed in the Edit Bid Strategy menu for each line item, where you can modify the CPC bid over the course of the flight.
The range is based on continuous real-time analysis of historical auction data within your line item’s SKUs’ categories – and specifically for existing line items, the auctions your line item specifically competed in.
Suggested Bids helps to simplify the optimization process by arming you with instant insight into competitor bids, to benchmark your own CPC against. This can help you more efficiently assess the right level at which to bid without risking overpaying relative to other advertisers in your category and ensure that your campaign starts winning auctions and reaching relevant shoppers immediately.
If you decide impressions are worth more than the suggested bid range, you can always raise your CPC higher and your SKUs will be more likely to win auctions and serve onsite. Conversely, you can set your bid below the range, until the Minimum Bid is reached.
For more information on bidding, please check the following related articles:
Page Type Bid Multipliers
Bid Multipliers allow you to optimize your bidding strategy at the page type level. You can increase or decrease your bid by the page type that the ad placement would appear on. There are four page type options for you to choose between:
Category Page
Home Page
Product Detail Page
Search Page
With page type bid multipliers, you can select any of the above page types, and then modify your bid by a percent change to increase or decrease your bid by that page type. You can increase your bid by up to +500% and decrease your bid by up to -50%.
How to set a Page Type Bid Multiplier
On the Campaigns page, click the name of the campaign you want to edit a line item for.
On the resulting Line Items page, click the name of the desired line item.
Click the Placements page.
Click the Edit icon in the Bid Multiplier column of the page type you want to adjust.
In the dialog that opens, enter the percentage you want to increase or decrease the bid by, and click Save.
You can view the Bid Multiplier percentage and the resulting Adjusted Bid amount on the Placements page.
Product Bid Overrides
Product bid overrides let you adjust your bid at the product level. They are designed to give you increased flexibility in your bidding strategy. Product bid overrides are used when you want to adjust the bid of 1 product but not all products under the line item. They can be used to implement a higher or a lower bid relative to the line item CPC.
Unlike a page-type bid multiplier that tells the system to increase or decrease the bids for a particular type of inventory by a percentage factor (e.g. +20% on Search, -20% on Homepage), a product bid override is a set bid amount that is applied to an individual product. For that particular product, this bid will be used instead of its line item’s CPC. Any implemented page type bid multipliers will then be applied to the product bid override when that individual SKU is sent to auction for the relevant inventory types.
How to set a product bid override:
From the Campaigns dashboard, select the campaign that contains the product(s) for which you wish to apply the product bid override.
Once inside the campaign, click on the relevant line item’s hyperlinked name.
You will be redirected to the Products dashboard for that line item, listing all products that the line item contains. In the table, scroll to the right until you see a column titled Product Bid and click the Edit icon.
Input the amount you want to bid for that individual product.
Alternatively, if you want to see all products that live under a campaign:
After selecting the campaign, click on Products on the left sidebar menu of the Line Item dashboard (instead of clicking the specific line item’s hyperlinked name like you did in Step 2 above).
You will see all products featured under the campaign, across all its line items. If you scroll to the right in this table, you will see the same Product Bid column and can also set product bid overrides here.
Editing in Bulk
To edit bids for multiple products at once, select the checkbox next to each product’s ON/OFF toggle when viewing the list of products within a specific line item, or when viewing the full product list, across all line items, within a campaign.
You can select all products by clicking the checkbox in the header row (above the Total row). If any checkbox is selected, an indicator showing how many products are currently selected will appear above the header row, along with an Edit option.
Once all the products whose bids you wish to edit are selected, click Edit. In addition to being able to turn the products ON or OFF, you can also Edit bids.
The bid editing functionality at the product level gives users three options by which to adjust their bids:
By set amount
By increasing or decreasing by % factor (e.g. if my bid is $1 and I increase by +20%, my new bid will be $1.20)
By removing any product bid overrides
If a line item has a Max Bid set and you wish to increase your product bid overrides to a set amount or by a percentage factor that would result in new override bids which exceed the current Max CPC value, choosing the Increase Maximum Bid option allows the line item’s Max CPC bid to be updated simultaneously to match either the new amount (if by set amount), or the highest resulting bid value of the set of bids which have been changed by percentage factor.
If this option is not selected, the product bids’ increases will be capped such that the new bids will match the existing Max CPC value of their respective line item.
Lastly, if the proposed increases do not result in a new product bid override amounts that exceed the line item’s current Max CPC value, selecting this option has no impact.
Existing Product Bid Override(s) | Existing Max CPC | Proposed Increase | Increase Maximum Bid Option Selected | Resulting Product Bid(s) Override(s) | Resulting Max Bid |
Product A Bid: $1
Product B Bid: $1.50 | $2 | Increase by +110% | Yes | Product A Bid: $1 + ($1*110%) = $2.10
Product B Bid: $1.50 + ($1.50*110%) = $3.15 | $2 → $3.15 |
Product A Bid: $1
Product B Bid: $1.50 | $2 | By Set Amount to $2.10 | No | Product A Bid: $1 → $2
Product B Bid: $1.50 → $2
The increasewill be capped to the existing Max CPC value of $2. | $2 No change. |
Product A Bid: $1
Product B Bid: $1.50 | $2 | Increase by +20% | Yes | Product A Bid: $1 + ($1*20%) = $1.20
Product B Bid: $1.50 + ($1.50*20%) = $1.80 | $2 No change, since $1.80 < $2. |
You will see a column showing the Original and New Bids to review your changes before clicking Save.
Bidding Hierarchy
Now that we've covered the different types of bidding tools users can utilize, we need to cover the bidding hierarchy that exists in the platform.
When setting up your line item, you will input a CPC bid that your line item will use when entering an auction. When you use a product bid, you are telling the platform that you want the platform to bid this new amount for this particular product instead of the CPC bid set in the line item.
If you are using a bid multipler for a page type, whenever applicable the bid multiplier will be used on the product bid amount if one is set for the product, and on the line item CPC bid if no product bid is set for the product.
To summarize, if no product bid is set the line item will bid using the CPC bid configured in the line item settings and bid multipliers will apply on the page type to both products with product bids set and products without specific bids.