What is the difference between the automatic and the manual campaign? The automatic campaign lets Bol decide on which search queries you’re shown. You don’t enter any keywords yourself. The goal is to discover what customers are searching for and what converts. The manual campaigns, the phrase and exact campaign, are for keywords you already know are working. There you have full control over the bid and the targeting is more precise and efficient.
Do I need to create campaigns in Bol myself? No. When you create a campaign group in Adyard and select your products, Adyard automatically builds the full structure for you in Bol. The automatic campaign, the phrase campaign, and the exact campaign are created right away, including the right ad groups and negative keywords.
How often does Keyword Harvesting run? Once a day, at 17:00. The system then analyzes the search term data from the past 7 days and decides which search terms are ready to be forwarded.
Does Keyword Harvesting also work if I manually paused my campaign? Search terms from paused campaigns are not included. The system only looks at campaigns that are set to ENABLED or PAUSED via Adyard. If you manually paused a campaign in Bol outside of Adyard, the system can’t reliably detect that. So always manage your campaigns through Adyard.
What happens if there are no winning search terms on a given day? Then the system does nothing. Every search term is re-evaluated the next day based on data from the past 7 days. No keywords are added until a search term meets all threshold values.
Why isn’t a search term being forwarded even though it seems to be performing well? There are a few possible reasons. The search term doesn’t yet meet all threshold values at the same time: the campaign’s ACOS, the ACOS of the search term itself, the minimum number of clicks, and the minimum number of conversions all have to be met. Check in your reporting which value hasn’t reached the threshold yet. It could also be that the search term already exists as a keyword in the target campaign, in which case the system skips it.
My click threshold is set low but search terms still aren’t being forwarded. Then also check the relevance threshold. If your relevance threshold is set to 1 and a search term has 0 conversions, it still doesn’t qualify, even if it has enough clicks. Both thresholds need to be met.
Can I change the threshold values after the campaign group has already started? Yes. You can adjust the settings of a campaign group at any time. The new values will be taken into account the next day when evaluating search terms.
How selective should I be with my threshold values? That depends on your category and your conversion rate. A click threshold that’s too low means search terms are forwarded based on too little data, which can lead to poor keywords in your manual campaigns. A threshold that’s too high means the system waits too long and misses opportunities. Start conservatively, check after two weeks which search terms have been forwarded, and adjust the thresholds based on what you see.
Why are negative keywords added? To prevent your automatic campaign and manual campaigns from bidding on the same query and competing with each other. As soon as a search term is forwarded to the manual campaigns, it’s added as a negative keyword to the campaign it came from. This way, traffic always flows to the campaign with the most control.
What if I don’t have a phrase campaign, only an automatic and an exact one? Keyword Harvesting also works with two campaigns. Search terms from the automatic campaign are then added directly as exact keywords to the exact campaign. The phrase step is skipped.
Can a keyword end up in both the phrase and the exact campaign? Yes. A search term from the automatic campaign is added as both a phrase and an exact keyword at the same time. The system then adds the right negative keywords so they don’t compete with each other.
Do I need to set up the Bid Optimizer separately for my manual campaigns? Yes. Keyword Harvesting adds keywords to your manual campaigns, but doesn’t adjust the bids. Link a ruleset to your manual campaigns to activate the Bid Optimizer. It picks up the new keywords as soon as they’ve gathered enough data and adjusts the bids daily towards your target ACOS.
What does the Bid Optimizer do with a keyword that was just added by Keyword Harvesting? A new keyword doesn’t have any clicks yet in the manual campaign. That’s why the Bid Optimizer doesn’t pick it up yet; that’s the job of the Bid Finder. The Bid Finder raises the bid step by step until the keyword starts generating clicks. Once there’s enough data, the Bid Optimizer takes over and adjusts the bid based on actual performance.
How do I know if the full cycle is working properly? Check in the keyword report which keywords have recently been added by Keyword Harvesting and whether the Bid Optimizer has already adjusted bids for them. If keywords are being added, the Bid Finder is building up the bid, and the Bid Optimizer then fine-tunes it, the cycle is working as intended.
