Page Summary
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Bid simulations estimate ad group, criteria, and campaign performance under different bidding scenarios to optimize your bidding strategy.
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These simulations predict the impact of bid changes on cost, impressions, and clicks using historical data, similar to the Google Ads UI bid simulators.
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Bid simulations help research scenarios like adjusting bids to manage costs or increase impressions and clicks by showing projected performance based on past data.
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By examining simulated past performance at different bid levels, you can make informed decisions for future bid adjustments and campaign bid modifiers.
The Google Ads API lets you retrieve bid simulation data, which can help you estimate how changes to bids or budgets might impact your performance for key metrics like cost, clicks, impressions, and conversions.
Use case
Suppose you have an ad that's been running for a few weeks, and it is costing a lot more than you expected or wanted to spend.
You want to test what might happen if you lower your bids a little. How many fewer views and clicks would your ad get? How much less would it cost?
Conversely, what if your ad isn't getting the number of impressions and clicks you expect? How do you know where you should set your bids to fix that problem?
Bid simulations help you research these scenarios. When you fetch a bid simulation, it shows projected views, clicks, and cost during the time period your ad was showing.
With bid simulations, you can examine performance statistics for the past week at the current level of bidding, alongside simulated performance over the same time period using different bid amounts.
By analyzing how your ads might have performed differently in the past, you can make more informed decisions about how to adjust your bids and campaign-level bid modifiers for the future.
API capabilities compared to the Google Ads UI
The API provides access to simulation data primarily at the following levels:
- Campaigns: Including simulations for budget changes and Target CPA/Target ROAS bid changes.
- Ad groups: Simulating the impact of changing ad group level bids.
- Keywords (ad group criteria): Estimating effects of keyword bid alterations.
- Bidding strategies: Assessing outcomes for portfolio bidding strategy bid changes.
This functionality is similar to the bid simulator features available for these entities within the Google Ads UI. However, the API's focus is on providing the raw simulation data. It may not encompass all the specialized simulation visualizations, tools, or all simulation types, such as device bid adjustments, present in the Google Ads UI.
How to use API bid simulations
To programmatically retrieve and utilize bid simulation data, you'll work with various simulation resources in the API. These resources provide point estimates for different bid values.
For a comprehensive list of available simulation resources, fields, and detailed code examples, refer to Retrieve bid simulations. This guide explains the scope and usage of bid simulations within the Google Ads API.