today we are talking about the learning phase whenever you create a campaign in Google ads or make significant changes you're going to go into what's called learning and what Google is trying to do during learning and what you should do as an Advertiser are questions I'm going to answer today on this video so stay tuned because you are about to learn as I mentioned whenever you create a new campaign in Google ads that's not using manual CPC your campaign will start off in the learning phase of course with manual CPC because you're setting your bids yourself Google doesn't have to learn anything because it's not informing its bid strategy you are as The Advertiser now I've talked loads about how manual CPC is basically dead on the channel and if you disagree with me let me know in the comments but if you are like me and you're advertising using a smart bidding strategy chances are when you launch a new campaign you're going to go into the learning phase and sometimes it's not even just a new campaign that goes into the learning phase your existing campaigns can swing back into learning as well because of a few reasons for a start if you migrate away from manual CPC over to a Smart bidding strategy you're going to go back into learning if you make a big significant edit to an existing smart bidding strategy for example changing your CPA Target from $50 to $100 then you're going to go back into learning then as well because it's such a major change Google has to reand how to spend your budget to meet your new objective and lastly you can go back into the learning phase if you make a significant change to your budget as well if you massively increase your budget or if you massively decrease your budget Google has to again understand how to spend your budget to meet your objectives with this new parameter that it has it can't just do it straight away it needs to know how to bid effectively based on those objectives so how long does this learning phase actually last well it completely depends on a number of factors in fact there are four specific factors that determine how long your campaign will need to take to learn how to bid the first one is your conversion volume volume if you're running a campaign with very low conversion volume maybe one conversion every few days then it's going to take a lot longer to learn how to bid for your goals in your campaign than a campaign that's getting 10 conversions per day there's a massive difference in the volume of data available because as you can imagine Google is setting bids at the point of auction based on the profile and behavior with the data points of that customer so if it's getting loads of data points frequently it learns exactly what behaviors are exhibited by those users to lead to a conversion it's going to learn much quicker than if it had way less data points at a way lower frequency then it will take longer for Google to become confident in bidding towards your goals the second one is actually quite interesting because it's something we don't really think about as advertisers that often and that is the latency period between that initial click and your conversion the time between those two things when the customer clicks the ad and when they actually complete the conversion action that has an effect on the level of learning Google has to do as well this is known as the conversion cycle and the conversion cycle is that latency period say for example you're running a campaign in the e-commerce space and people see an item they like it and they buy it then that kind of conversion cycle is going to be a lot shorter than somebody advertising in the B2B space where the latency between the click and the actual conversion action could take days or even weeks and even sometimes a much longer period than that and that is the reason sometimes campaigns can take a long time to learn Google needs to understand which click drove the conversion and then when it gets that feedback loop of understanding which click drove the conversion then it can bid confidently and exit the learning phase if the the latency period is a long time then Google will take even longer to understand how to exit the learning phase the third factor that affects how long it takes for Google to learn how to spend your budget is going to be down to your bid strategy if you're running a smart bidding strategy using something like Target Ros or Target CPA on top of a Max conversions or max conversion value strategy that's quite a complex bidding strategy so there's a lot of layers Google has to understand it doesn't just have to get as many conversions or as much conversion value for your budget it also has to try and get that within the parameters of that Target CPA or Target roas that you have set as well so there are a lot more factors at play it's a lot more difficult of a goal to hit therefore the learning period for these types of bid strategies can take a lot longer than other strategies you may use for example if you use another automated bidding strategy like maximize clicks or a Target impression share yes it will go into learning and Google will have to learn how to spend your budget effectively but essentially because it's a much more simplified goal because Google has a pot of money and it has to determine how many clicks I can get for that money or how much impression share I can get for that money it's a lot more of a simplified goal based outside of user Behavior it's purely based on the auction itself so there's a lot less parameters at play meaning Google can learn much more quickly which is why those two more simplified strategies take a lot less time to learn than some of the more complex bidding strategies and finally the last factor that can really affect how long it takes for your campaigns to learn is your historical account data say you launch a brand new campaign and you've got plenty of conversion data in your account if your new campaign is using the same conversion Point as the historical conversion data in your account it will learn much more quickly because all of that conversion data all of that profile data attached to that conversion is going to be reused by Google meaning it can hit the ground running a lot more easily and find people who match your exact target customer much more easily if you start a new campaign in an account with no conversion data no history then it will take a lot longer to learn for the obvious reason there's no reference data for Google to start with so it's essentially starting from zero so Google goes out there tries to find customers in line with your goals it exits the learning phase what happens next well if you're in a good position then nothing really happens any differently you just become illegible your campaign spends towards your goals and Google has the confidence it can reach your goals and that is exactly what will happen if you exit the learning phase successfully Google thinks it can hit your goal it will give you an elgible status and say yep we're going to keep going for this target however if Google doesn't feel confident it can hit your target goals then it's going to be for a couple of reasons number one is if you set a Target CPA that's beyond what Google can potentially achieve then Google will have to try and bring down its costs in line with that goal so say you have a CPA Target of $50 and Google is trying to hit that Target and time after time during that learning phase it can't hit that Target it's bringing conversions in at $100 $150 eventually Google when it settles will have to try and Achieve that $50 Target regardless and that means it has to lower its bids and bring down its aggression in order to try and hit that Target which is massively going to lower your volume of clicks and when when that happens you get a limited by bid status which means Google is saying to you hey we want to bid more and we know we can get more for your money in this campaign but your bid strategy is limiting us from doing that now you might think you have to react here and then simply increase your CPA Target or decrease your Ros Target to make it more open but you don't necessarily have to do that remember focus on your profitability first if your CPA Target is set at your absolute maximum and you cannot exceed that don't just do it because Google wants you to do it you just have to accept that in the playing field you're in there is a lot more potential traffic on the table but you can't afford it yet so always bid in line with your business goals and if a Google rep phones you up and says hey you're being limited you're not you're limiting your campaign tell them I'm not limiting my campaign but if I do what you say you'll be limiting my business you can of course also be limited by budget and if that occurs and you're hitting your CPA Target or your rows Target or the overall objectives of your campaign and you have the budget you should really increase your budget you don't want to be in a position where your campaigns are under budget but achieving their desired outcome and their desired goal because if your campaign's working and you're making money why don't you reinvest that profit back into Google ads and make more money it doesn't make sense to have a limited by budget status if your campaign is succeeding on the goals you have set so that status shouldn't really be there if you're running campaigns in the right way there's one more status Google can give you after the learning phase that is not positive in terms of just having an eligible status and that is if your campaign is limited by volume it's something Google never used to do if you run a low volume campaign Google will just say you're elgible and that's it and you just have a low volume campaign there's not much traffic going through the account and that's it but Google obviously wants to make sure advertisers are aware that they want you to spend more money now a limited campaign in this regard basically means Google thinks your keywords and your targeting is too minimal for Google to bid effectively and finally the last status you can get after the learning phase is being limited by volume and this is where Google says yes we're bidding and we're trying to bid towards your objective but your overall targeting is not giving us much volume of traffic here so if you're running something with exact match keywords with a very small Target area with a very small keyword list you might get this status in the world of Google ads it's a relatively new status because Google just used to give this kind of campaign an eligible status and of course if you were running a low volume campaign that's all it was it was a small campaign but now Google wants to communicate the facts to you that you should be spending more but actually I don't think you necessarily should be spending more depending on your circumstances say you're running a campaign for a very Niche product or service all on exact match and it's very very Niche you already know it's a niche service you already know it's going to be low volume why would you want to open up your volume to irrelevant searches by moving two phrase or broad if that's the strategy you're trying to go with it doesn't make any sense to do that and of course if you're servicable Target area is a certain radius or town or city why would you want to open that up further either so it depends on your objectives being a low volume campaign isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as you're maximizing all opportunities available to you the same goes for keyword suggestions that Google makes as well if your campaign is low volume and Google is suggesting a bunch of new keywords to add in and they don't really make sense for you and they don't really meet the objectives of what people are looking for for your business then don't add them just accept you have a low volume campaign and that's okay because low volume campaigns can be profitable and it can make your business this money and you understand anyway that the parameters of that particular campaign are going to be low volume and that is what happens during the learning phase let me know in the comments if your campaigns are struggling to exit the learning phase to an elgible status let me know if you're having any issues in terms of low volume or limited by bid or limited by budget I reply to pretty much all comments on all of my videos like this video if you like it don't forget to subscribe don't forget to check out the rest of the content across the channel and I'll see you guys on my next video