How to steer AI-powered Search ads

• If you’re using a portfolio strategy, adjust your targets at the portfolio level for several campaigns at once.
• If you’re not using a portfolio bid strategy, you can adjust them for each individual campaign.
• In your campaigns, you may set your ROAS or CPA target at the ad group level.

Adjusting budgets:

• When using Maximize conversions or Maximize conversion value without a ROAS or CPA goal, Smart Bidding will drive as much conversion volume or conversion value as possible within your daily budget. If you’re using a portfolio bid strategy, you can easily manage the budget of all campaigns in a new or existing portfolio bid strategy by using a shared budget.

In the recommendations page, you may find suggestions for your bidding and budgets to drive more performance at a similar ROI.

Target and budget simulators:

When adjusting your CPA or ROAS goals, or when making changes to your budget if you are not optimizing to a target, we suggest reviewing your Smart Bidding simulators to see how these may impact key metrics like your clicks, conversion value, conversions, and spend. Check out How to make target adjustments with Search Smart Bidding for details.

You can change your bid strategy at any time. When you make a change, the performance will take some time to stabilize as the system learns to optimize to the new bid strategy. When changing bid strategies, we suggest setting the new bid strategy goals to something similar to your previous performance. You can also use experiments to test another automated bid strategy against your current bid strategy. Check out About automated bidding to learn more about available bid strategies.

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click the Audiences, keywords, and content drop down in the section menu.
3. Click Search keywords.
4. Click on the "Negative search keywords" tab and then click the plus icon .
5. Select Add negative keywords or create new list.
6. Choose whether to add negative keywords to a campaign or an ad group, then select the specific campaign or ad group.
7. Add your keywords, one per line. Make sure that your negative keywords don't overlap with your regular keywords because this will cause your ad not to show. Choose a match type by using the appropriate notation.
8. If you’re adding your negative keywords to a campaign, you have the option to save the keywords to a new or existing negative keyword list and apply that list to the campaign. Check Save to new or existing list, then enter a name for your new list, or select an existing list.
9. Click Save.

To use an existing negative keyword list:

1. Select Use negative keyword list.
2. Choose the campaign that you’d like to apply negative keyword lists to.
3. Check the boxes of the negative keyword lists you’d like to use.
4. Click Save.

To add or remove negative keywords lists from multiple campaigns at once:

1. Click Campaigns.
2. Check the box next to the campaigns you want to apply your negative keyword lists to.
3. Click Edit, and select Edit targeting.
4. To add negative keyword lists, select Add negative keyword lists.
5. Check the box next to the lists you want to add to these campaigns.
6. Click Apply.
7. To remove negative keyword lists, select Remove negative keyword lists.
8. Check the box next to the lists you want to remove from these campaigns.
9. Click Apply.

• Pinning one headline or description causes it to show only in that specific position, preventing other headlines or descriptions from showing in its place. Since pinning reduces the overall number of headlines or descriptions that can be matched to a potential customer’s search, pinning isn’t recommended for most advertisers.
• Try pinning 2 or 3 headlines or descriptions to each position so that any of them can show in that position. This gives you more flexibility to find out which headlines or descriptions perform better.
  • For example, if you pin the headline “Official Website” to Headline position 1, then all ads that customers view will have “Official Website” as the first headline. However, if you pin a second headline—let’s say “The Official Site”—to Headline position 1, then all ads that customers view will show either “Official Website” or “The Official Site” as the first headline.
• If you have headlines and/or descriptions pinned to all available positions, unpinned headlines and/or descriptions won’t show.
• Headlines or descriptions pinned to Headline position 1, Headline position 2, or Description position 1 will always show. Content pinned to Headline position 3 and Description position 2 are not guaranteed to show in every ad. If you have text that should appear in every ad, then you must pin it to either Headline position 1, Headline position 2, or Description position 1.
• To preview how your responsive search ad will appear to users, click the preview icon.