Bing Ads has released two new automated bidding options which you may be familiar with if you are using Google Ads: Target CPA and Maximize Conversions. Up until this month, the only bidding options available in Bing were Manual, Maximize Clicks, and Enhanced CPC.

This is welcome news as I have always preferred the Target CPA and Maximized Conversions options in Google over Enhanced CPC.

Let’s review what these two bidding methods do and where to find them in the Bing Ads interface.

Target CPA Bidding

With Target CPA, you set your budget and target 30-day average CPA, and Bing Ads automatically sets your bids in real time to get you to this average. Some conversions may cost more than your target and some may cost less, but Bing Ads will try to make sure your average cost per conversion is in line with your target.

Target CPA is a campaign-level target and you cannot change bids for keywords that are in a campaign using Target CPA bidding. Individual ad groups may have different CPAs, and those CPAs may vary over time, while the campaign target CPA is met. Different devices may see different CPAs as well.

Bing Ads will try to stay within your overall budget, but if you want more control over your bids while using Target CPA, you can also set a maximum CPC. This is an optional limit you can set to make sure that Bing Ads never pays more than a certain amount for each individual click and is not available in Google Ads.

Keep in mind that if you are using bid adjustments, they will be used to inform your Target CPA automated bids. Bid adjustments may cause your bid to go higher than your maximum CPC if you have one set.

You must have set up conversion tracking set up and have had at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days in order to use the Target CPA bid strategy. If your campaign falls below 15 conversions over any 30-day period, Target CPA will stop optimizing your bids and it’s recommended you switch to a different bidding method.