Google Ads: Manual vs. Automated Bidding, Frustration with "Other" Search Terms and CPC Trends Over Time
A little background to begin: I work for an economic SaaS company, spending between $70k-$90k/mo. on Google Ads. I've run Google Ads campaigns for about 10 years (7 years agency-life prior to in-house), and have been through most stages of account structure best practices.
Our current account composition is solely search, with about 15% in branded spend, and the remaining 85% focused heavily on our head terms and additional research terms in our space. Campaign and ad group structure is primarily intent based, with exact and phrase match versions of keywords in each ad group (not SKAG or anything so tailored), but relatively tight KW grouping in ad groups ranging from 8 - 15 KW's that align by intent and discovery stage.
We're not an entirely niche company, but given price points and demand, our non-branded campaigns typically see 15 - 30 conversions in a given 30 day period. We've seen success with automated bidding in the past despite being on the cusp of recommended conversion levels, but lately it feels like we're really feeling the squeeze. We're primarily on Max Conversion Value with a blend of offline conversion value imports when deals are created or closed, along with artificial conversion values assigned to other conversion actions (content downloads, contact requests, demo/pricing meeting scheduled, etc.), and occasionally will mix max conversions or tIMPR share when breaking into a new vertical.
The problem: Like many others have stated, our "other" search terms have really grown in the last 2 years are so, and for the last 30 days we've seen 2/3 of all search terms grouped under this category. These "other" terms account for 1/3 of all conversions, but their CPC's are twice our known search terms, CPAs are 3x as high, and CTRs are half our account average. I perform daily NKW harvesting, and our account rep just reinforces Google's privacy stance and once again directs me to the "Search Terms Insights" window of their insights and reports tab.
We're the only advertiser shown in our NB Auctions, not even the occasional <10% competitor you'd expect from time to time, yet CPC's for known search terms are up 136% YoY, and "other" search term CPCs are up 105% YoY.
My question for you all: Am I crazy for wanting to go back to manual bidding, and would we just get whooped by anyone else using automated bids? If we go EM-only on our core terms to avoid the "other" search terms I don't think we'd have the volume to give any form of automated bidding a fair chance, but if we continue on this road we're going to be far beyond the point of diminishing returns. I know Google will "push" CPCs when they feel an auction will likely convert, but if there's no known competitors in the space and I'm unable to see the search term, +$100 CPCs feel tough to justify.
Apologies for the wall of text, just feeling frustrated and would love to hear from anyone else who might be seeing similar trends.
