Target CPA bidding will help advertisers who use Google Ads to get as many conversions as they can for their set budget, but it won’t necessarily help them save money.

To actually lower or reduce the cost it takes to acquire a new customer in Google Ads, PPC marketers need experience.

What is Target CPA bidding?

Target CPA is an AdWords Smart Bidding Strategy that enables you to set bids for generating as many conversions as possible at the target cost-per-acquisition (CPA) you choose.

The bids are optimized using advanced machine learning – thus, there are capabilities that tailor bids for every auction.

If I increase my target CPA, will I get more conversions?

Yes. If increasing cost-per-conversion is not a concern, go ahead and increase CPA targets and receive more conversions.

In the first chart, targets were increased in high converting ad groups and conversions rose accordingly.

Actual cost-per-conversion increased 27% after 30 days and conversions increased by 67%.

Because conversion volume is the goal, the 67% increase in conversions outweighs the 27% increase in cost-per-conversion.

Long term tips

Search terms 

You can dig even deeper into your keyword performance by analyzing the actual search terms that triggered your ads. Take, for instance, you are bidding on the broad match keyword: iphone charger.

As a broad match keyword, there are tons of potential queries that could trigger your ads only by containing one or both of those keywords.

So how can you tell if the keyword is truly generating quality traffic if you don’t know for sure what that traffic actually consists of?

Take a look into your audience

If you’re not already running a Remarketing campaign or an RLSA campaign, Audience insights would be great to leverage here.

If you’re not running a Remarketing campaign, this is another great way to boost conversions by targeting individuals who have already expressed interest by previously clicking your ads and visiting your site.

You can also layer audiences to further optimize bidding. In-Market audiences include users based on what they are actively researching or planning, and Affinity audiences include users based on their interests and habits on the web.

Work on your quality score

Take a step back from your campaigns, and look at the entire picture. Do all the pieces go together?

You can send the most appropriate, highly qualified, ready-to-convert, traffic to your site, but if the page you’re sending them to isn’t built for what you’re trying to have them do, then what’s the point?

Short conclusion

CPA bidding is great when you have a target CPA for all keywords in each ad group; however, the majority of ecommerce sites utilizes the target ROAS rather than the target CPA.

In such case, note that CPA bidding is rarely the best bid method to use.