Bid Optimization Strategy in SplitMetrics Acquire is a digital advertising solution that harnesses our extensive expertise in Apple Ads automation to tailor your bidding strategies toward achieving specific campaign performance goals. In SplitMetrics Acquire, we offer two powerful bid optimization methods:

💎 Condition-based optimization offers precise control by optimizing performance for each keyword across single or multiple campaigns to achieve a specific target KPI for each keyword under the bid strategy (CPA, CPI, ROAS);

💎 AI bid optimization method takes a centralized and holistic approach by automatically adjusting bids across a portfolio of keywords within one campaign, rather than focusing on each keyword. Our advanced AI models help maximize overall conversions within your target metrics, while ensuring that all keywords work together as one to achieve the best possible results.

In this article, we’ll delve into our Condition-based strategies and how they can help you achieve your desired target KPI for each keyword across multiple campaigns. To learn about our cutting-edge AI bid optimization, check out this 🔗 Help Center article.

What are the benefits?

⚡ You can save time and reduce manual effort to concentrate on other crucial elements of your campaigns.

⚡ You can tailor the Bid Strategy to your needs by adjusting target KPI settings and bidding aggressiveness to align with specific campaign objectives, whether it's ROAS, CPI, or CPA.

⚡ With incremental bid adjustments, the algorithm allows you to prevent overspending on non-converting or irrelevant keywords, maximizing cost-efficiency.

⚡ The algorithm covers almost all keywords, boosting the underperforming ones to increase your ROI and improve overall campaign results.

⚡ The tool is transparent and informative, guiding you with сlear insights about the current keyword optimization stage, estimated target value, and recommended actions.

⚡ By using automatic Condition-based smart bid optimization, you can save time and resources to concentrate on other crucial elements of your campaigns.

How Condition-Based Bid Optimization Strategy Works

This strategy optimizes bids across multiple campaigns to achieve a specific target CPA, CPI, or ROAS for each keyword under the strategy. The optimization process involves analyzing historical keyword performance data, competitors' landscape and identifying keywords that are driving the most conversions, revenue or installs, and those not worth the investment.

🔎 Keyword Evaluation Stage: The algorithm assesses each keyword separately based on installs, conversions, cost, revenue, current impression share, and Share of Voice (SOV).

⚖️ Optimization Stage: It then groups the keywords into categories and defines an optimization stage by comparing them with the target KPIs.

Optimization Stages

Optimizing, well-performing: Well-performing keywords that exceed KPIs are scaled within their target KPI while maintaining top positions without overspending.
Optimizing, optimal: Optimal-performing keywords that meet their target KPIs are optimized for volume growth while ensuring the best cost.
Optimizing, low-performing: Keywords that bring expensive conversions are reviewed for bid adjustments. The optimal approach would be to optimize the funnel by increasing your ads’ TTR through improving Custom Product Pages.
Accumulating data: Keywords that started getting data but need more conversions for optimal bid adjustment. You can wait or increase the current CPT bid using the ‘Suggested Bid' column.
Boosting: Keywords lacking sufficient conversions receive gradual CPT bid increases to gather impressions and conversions.
Not converting: Keywords with impressions but no conversions - need to have their bids reduced to minimize losses.
Not relevant: Low-relevance keywords with sufficient bids but no impressions.

Best practices for bid strategy setup

Before jumping right in and creating your very first strategy, please take a moment to read the guidelines below. These recommendations are important to consider for ensuring the most efficient results.

🏆 Optimize running campaigns with at least 3 weeks of performance history and a minimum of 50 conversions of your target in-app events during the given period.

🏆 Choose realistic targets. Review your target KPI over the last 30 or 90 days to determine an appropriate target value. For best results, refer to our recommended target values.

🏆 Avoid using the same target for campaigns with both top-performing and low-performing keywords. Instead, consider creating multiple strategies for better bid optimization.

🏆 Be mindful of any active automated rules that change bids in the campaign under the strategy with enabled automatic adjustments. In case of an overlap, these rules will skip keywords managed by the strategy, allowing the strategy to take full control of bid adjustments.

Important: The current version of Bid Strategy does not include time-sensitive optimization and does not consider highly specific bidding setups due to seasonality factors.

How to set up Condition-Based strategies?

Go to Optimization Hub > Bid Optimization Strategies and click Create Strategy.

Configure general settings

Choose the app where you want to apply the strategy. Begin typing your app's name, and select it from the list.
Select one or multiple campaigns to include in the strategy.
Enter a unique name for the strategy to help track its performance.

❗ Once you select campaigns and create a Condition-Based strategy, you won’t be able to change the selected campaigns later. Make sure your selection is correct before clicking Create Strategy.

Select a strategy goal

Select an existing Campaign optimization goal, or set a new goal directly in the strategy by specifying the target metric and value if no suitable goal exists yet 👇

💡 Note: If you update the goal in the strategy, the changes are automatically synced with Goals in Optimization Hub and applied to all campaigns assigned to that Goal. Connected automation tools will use the updated target.

Target CPA: Optimize conversions within the maximum cost per action, maintaining cost efficiency and quality outcomes.
Target ROAS: Optimize conversions to achieve your target ROAS by prioritizing revenue-driving opportunities, balancing costs and returns effectively.
Target CPI: Increase install volume while staying within your CPI target. The strategy adjusts bids to optimize app installs at the best cost.

💡 Pro-tip. Optimizing towards CPI can help manage ad spend and increase ROI by driving installs. However, it may not always be effective if:

Conversion rates are low or inconsistent across keywords. Consider improving your app’s top-funnel conversion rates or exploring other ad formats.
Your app operates in a highly competitive market. Alternative tactics, like enhancing ASO or visibility through other channels, may deliver better results.

Specify your strategy intent

Choose the main objective your bid strategy will focus on to drive desired results.

Bid strategy is designed to optimize specific outcomes, such as increasing visibility, driving conversion volume, or improving overall performance efficiency. Align the goal with your campaign's objectives for optimal outcomes. What’s your focus?

I Focus on Visibility	If your primary objective is to maximize visibility and reach, choose the *Scale Up Conversions, Scale Up ROAS, or Scale Up Installs* strategy intent, depending on your campaign objective. These options aim to increase campaign performance and expand reach by driving more conversions, revenue, or installs.
I Focus on Conversion Volume	For campaigns focused on increasing conversion volume, choose a *Scale Up* or *Maintain Average* strategy intent. These options help drive more conversions while keeping performance aligned with your target and maintaining cost efficiency.
I Focus on Performance Results	If your primary focus is cost efficiency or maximizing ROI, choose *Decrease CPI/CPA* to reduce acquisition costs while increasing conversion volume. If you want to maintain consistent performance against your target, choose *Maintain Conversions at Target CPA* or *Maintain Average ROAS*, depending on your campaign objective. These options help sustain conversion volume or return on ad spend while keeping performance aligned with your target.

By aligning your bid strategy with your campaign’s specific objectives, you can take a more targeted and effective approach to achieving your desired outcomes.

Campaign Objectives - Comparison Table (click ▼ to unfold)

Configure Impression Share settings

Expand the Advanced Options to customize how the strategy manages fluctuations in impression share, allowing you to fine-tune bids based on keyword performance.

High-performance focus (Default): The strategy maintains bids only for well-performing keywords with Impression Share value > 91%. This helps secure the #1 position for keywords meeting target KPIs while minimizing unnecessary spending.
Maximum coverage: You can choose to maintain bids for well, optimal, and low-performing keywords with Impression Share over 91%, aiming to maximize visibility even for less effective keywords in the competitive landscape.
Broader coverage for Brand campaigns: For even wider reach, maintain bids on all keywords, including those with lower performance or relevance. This ensures coverage for important brand or strategic keywords in the brand-heavy campaigns, but may result in less efficient spending.

Set the date range for analysis

Select the date range for analysis by expanding the Advanced Options section.

For CPI or ROAS strategies, the date range is preset to 14 days, the minimum required for accurate results.
For CPA strategies, the default is Automatic, where Bid Strategy selects the best range based on data sufficiency. If unsure, stick with the Automatic option.

💡 If you notice data anomalies or irregular performance (e.g., unusual spikes or dips in conversions), you may use the Exclude specific date range setting to omit specific dates from analysis (as a fixed period). You can exclude multiple date ranges, with longer ranges prioritized if they overlap. Ensure the excluded period does not exceed your intended analysis range.

By enabling the Set as Rolling toggle, the selected dates will update dynamically, moving forward as the calendar advances. This allows you to continuously exclude "today + a specific time period." A rolling icon will appear in the selector to indicate this setting.

Configure Bidding guardrails

The bid optimization strategy evaluates keyword performance and shares bid recommendations for active keywords. If the Automated Bidding toggle is enabled, the strategy automatically adjusts CPT bids within your defined limits to maximize performance and prevent sudden spikes or drops.

❗Notes before activating Automated Bidding:

Keywords labeled as "Don't apply suggested bid" will not be adjusted automatically by the condition-based strategy.
The strategy does not adjust bids for keywords in non-running ad groups or campaigns.

Configuring the following settings ensures bid recommendations and adjustments align with your preferences:

Lower bid limit: Set a minimum bid limit to ensure your keywords enter the auction.
Upper bid limit: To avoid overspending, set an upper limit for your bids.
Max bid adjustment ($/%): Set a maximum increment limit to control how much CPT bid can increase - the lower of the two values (either $ or %) will apply. Lower caps require more frequent updates, while higher caps allow for larger, less frequent changes. A 20% cap is recommended for optimal results.
Bid adjustment frequency cap: Set a limit on how often CPT bids can be adjusted. While the algorithm automatically determines the best frequency based on keyword performance, it will not adjust bids more often than your specified limit. Once every 24 hours or less is recommended.

💸👮 Spend loss prevention mechanism:

This setting helps prevent overspending on random and expensive conversions for low-performing keywords by significantly reducing bids — even if this bypasses your configured bid limits. It allows you to save budget and reallocate it more efficiently.

When to Turn It Off: If you are running the strategy for a campaign with low conversion volume where all conversions are highly valuable, make sure you turn off the ‘Prevent spend loss’ setting to avoid potential volume loss.

Once you have finished configuring all the settings, click Create Strategy to finalize the setup. The first recommendations will be available within 3 hours after the strategy is created.

Budget Management

Budget Management helps you control campaign spend through two approaches: Budget Pacing for single-campaign strategies and Budget Allocation for multi-campaign strategies. Both use AI to manage budgets based on predicted performance and your optimization targets.

To enable, click the + Add Budget Management button and specify the settings.

Budget Pacing

Budget Pacing is available for CPA optimization in single-campaign strategies. It adjusts the daily budget of an individual campaign to help manage spend and achieve the target CPA.

You can configure the following settings:

Automatically adjust Daily Budget: Enable this option to apply budget changes automatically, or disable it to receive recommendations in the 🔗 Usage & Recommendation column.
Monthly Budget Cap (required): Set the maximum amount the campaign can spend during a calendar month.
Upper Daily Budget Limit (optional): Set the maximum daily budget the strategy can increase the campaign to.

The campaign’s current daily budget is displayed below these settings.

Budget Pacing can increase the daily budget when predicted performance indicates an opportunity to drive more conversions within your target CPA. It can also decrease the budget when spending is less likely to deliver the desired results. Budget decreases are available only during the first five days of the calendar month.

Budget Allocation

Budget Allocation is available for CPA, ROAS, and CPI optimization in multi-campaign strategies. It distributes a shared daily budget across selected campaigns based on predicted performance, directing spend toward campaigns with stronger opportunities to achieve the strategy’s optimization target.

You can configure the following settings:

Automatically adjust Daily Budget: Enable this option to apply budget changes automatically, or disable it to receive recommendations in the 🔗 Usage & Recommendation column.
Shared Daily Budget (required): Set the total daily budget available across the selected campaigns. The strategy allocates this budget based on predicted performance and conversion opportunities. The shared budget cannot be lower than the sum of the campaigns’ current daily budget caps.

The current shared daily budget is displayed below these settings.

Budget Allocation can adjust how the shared budget is distributed across campaigns as predicted performance changes. You can update the shared daily budget at any time.

How to analyze the results?

You can analyze the results of your Bid Strategy either in Ads Manager or by reviewing the Change History. Both of these methods provide valuable information that can help you evaluate the performance of your Bid Strategy and make adjustments as needed.

💡Tip: After creating the strategy, we recommend waiting 3 days before reviewing the first changes. For keywords in stages such as "Optimizing, well-performing," "Optimizing, optimal," and "Optimizing, low-performing," begin evaluating results after at least 7 changes (e.g., if your frequency is once every 24 hours, review the first results after 1 week). For other stages, allow the strategy to work longer to gather sufficient impressions and data for accurate performance estimation.

Bid Strategy Analytics

To gain deeper insights into your bid strategy performance, use the Bid Strategy Analytics tool available in the Bid Strategy dashboard. This feature offers detailed, actionable data to evaluate the effectiveness of your AI-driven bid optimizations and make informed adjustments. 📖 Learn more here.

Ads Manager

➡️ Check the Suggested Bid column–it displays the current Optimization stage in color, along with a tooltip providing insights.

The Optimization stages are represented using 4 colors:

🩵 Blue for boosting and accumulating data keywords.

💚 Green for well-performing keywords. The status indicates that the bid for that keyword may be increased or that the current bid is already optimal.

❤️ Red for low-performing or non-converting keywords. The status suggests that the bid for that keyword may need to be decreased to improve its performance.

🩶 Gray for not relevant keywords that are not helping to optimize the performance.

💜 Purple for AI Bid Optimization.

Hover over the colored dot to review the target and current bids, a bid suggestion from our smart algorithm, the bid adjustment status, and the time of the last update.

➡️ Use the Bid Optimization Strategy column to identify the applied strategy name, and click it to review the strategy settings.

➡️ Check the Usage & Recommendation column. This metric shows how efficiently the daily budget is being utilized. If Budget Management is enabled, it will show AI-driven daily budget recommendations. Adjustments to the budget can be made based on these recommendations to ensure optimal campaign performance. 📖 Learn more

➡️ You may also analyze individual keyword performance with the CPT Bid metric on detailed charts. Use annotations to keep track of automatic bid adjustments (if enabled) and changes in keyword performance over time.

Change History

The history of bid adjustments is also available in Change History, enabling you to track and analyze changes over time.