Bid

Bid (bid) is the value that the advertiser sets in the advertising platform as the maximum price per purchase unit: click (CPC bid), thousand impressions (CPM bid) or targeted action (CPA bid). The actual write-down price in a second-price auction is usually less than the maximum bid.

Bid management is all about managing the balance between traffic volume and its cost. Increased bid = more impressions in competitive auctions + higher position. Reduced bid = savings, but the risk of falling out of impressions. There is a very fine line, especially in highly competitive niches.

When manually managing, I use the rule: bid = (target CPL × average CR from click to lead) × 0.9. For example, a target CPL of 500 ₽ with a CR of 5% gives bid = 500 × 0.05 × 0.9 = 22.5 ₽. This is the break-even point - you can set it higher if you need volume, or lower if the priority is efficiency.

With smart bidding, the algorithm itself controls the bid at the level of each auction, using dozens of signals (device, time of day, user history). The manual bid then turns into a limiter - a maximum beyond which the algorithm will not go. This is important: without a limiter, an auto strategy can temporarily raise the stakes to absurd levels during the learning phase.