Is anyone using this recently added bidding option / feature? Supposedly, with this new bidding option activated, Google's algos try to constantly adjust and optimize your individual keyword bids to get the most clicks possible for your monthly budget. The drawbacks are that this option is not compatible with campaign scheduling, and while it is active, you are not allowed to edit/change any of the keyword bids manually. When activated, it saves your current keyword bids and scheduling options, so if you choose to go back to manual bids, you can, and can pick up where you left off.

One idea I had was to let the algos do their optimization of keyword bids for a few weeks, long enough to get a good history. Then if I choose to go back to manual bids, and campaign scheduling, print out the "optimized" keyword bids for each ad group before I do so. Wherever the algo optimized bid was performing as well or better for that keyword than my previous manual bid, meaning decent CTR and conversions and lower average CPC, I would update the old manual bid with the algo's bid. This could resolve a number of over-bidding situations that I know I have, but was reluctant to deal with in fear of losing CTR and conversions.

I am just starting to use it with one existing campaign. I have good long term and recent history on the campaign, and I am not changing any of the keywords, ad text or landing pages, so it should be interesting to see the long term (30 days) apples-to-apples results, as compared to the manual bid adjustments I was doing. It's obviously too soon to tell what the long term results will be. But for the first two days, average CPC is already down by almost 25% vs. last month's results. It looks like the algos are still making their adjustments as keywords get their first few hits from consumers, so I'll post updates on results here every week or so until the experiment is done.