Target CPA

[JacksonMahoney]

Anybody using the new Target CPA in conversion optimizer? Any opinions if you think it would be better than using Max CPA?

[mindjelo]

we are testing now target CPA, but just for few days, so it would take some time to gett some data.

[DiscoStu]

I've been testing it for a while. It was interesting as I've been using the max CPA for a while and after some tweaking (of the max cpa) I managed to get it to land in on the right average cost . When I switched to target CPA however (with the desired average set as the target) it went over the average and stayed there for the duration of my test (one month). Eventually I switched back to max CPA again (which is set slightly above the desired average) and it went back to the desired average.

So in my experience, it doesn't do as good a job as tweaking the max cpa will do, but I think I will give it another try eventually

[JacksonMahoney]

Hey DiscoStu, I'm seeing the same issues when I switched over from Max to Target. My conversions/traffic went down a bunch, so I switched it back.

What I'm confused about is how different should the Target CPA be from Max CPA because I had just usually set my Max CPA to what I wanted it to be. So with Target CPA I used the same figure but still lost traffic and conversions. I don't know what Google differentiates between the two.

[DiscoStu]

As I understand it...

max cpa = a number Google isn't allowed to go over, like max cpc

target cpa = targeted average cpa, meaning conversions can cost more or less, but the average should turn out to be the targeted cost

If you look at max cpc, it's rarely the same as the average cpc. Setting a max cpc of 2 dollars means Adwords will only ever bid 2 dollars or less, meaning the average will typically be less than 2 dollars. If there was a thing as target cpc, I'm guessing the actual bids will hover around 2 dollars - some being over and some being under - and the average cpc will (ideally) be 2 dollars. I'm guessing CPA would work the same (but it doesn't seem to be working that well so far)

[ken_b]

I don't use AdWords, but I do use AdSense on my site, so I'm curious.

Does this CPA thing apply to Content Site Campaigns, or is it just on Search Campaigns?

[netmeg]

Both.