Brand Activator: Capture Incremental Traffic at a Lower CPC with Low-Bid Campaigns

• Benefits
• When Low-Bid Campaigns Are Activated
• MCC Linking Requirement
• Setup Instructions
• FAQ

Benefits

Low-bid campaigns enhance Adthena’s Brand Activator by ensuring your brand remains visible on Google SERPs, even when the main campaigns are paused.

The purpose of the Low-Bid campaign is to act as a safety net: when the main campaign stops serving ads due to BA, the Low-Bid campaign captures the residual traffic. Its goal is to acquire this traffic at significantly lower CPCs and spend, minimizing wasted opportunities while keeping costs tightly controlled.

By running at a much lower CPC, these campaigns provide a cost-effective backup that maintains brand presence without driving up overall spend.

Key benefits:

• Preserve incremental traffic: Maintain both paid and organic visibility without losing valuable brand clicks.
• Cost efficiency: Capture brand traffic at a fraction of the usual CPC, while keeping competitors off your terms.
• Fully automated: Bidding adjusts automatically to optimize cost and coverage with minimal effort.

By pairing low-bid campaigns with Brand Activator’s smart keyword management, you can reduce waste, protect your brand, and sustain performance—efficiently and reliably.

When Low-Bid Campaigns Are Activated

Low-Bid Campaigns are triggered when:

• There is no competition on your brand keywords, and
• Your site has top-ranking organic listings for those terms.

What the System Does

• Pauses evergreen brand keywords
• Activates the same keywords with a low Max CPC bid

What You Can Expect

• Lower CPCs
• Maximum SERP coverage (organic + paid)
• Ongoing ad copy control

MCC Linking Requirement

Low-Bid campaigns are only available for Google Ads accounts linked via MCC. Please ensure all your accounts are MCC-linked before setting up a campaign. 

If you have a mix of MCC-linked and legacy-linked accounts, only the MCC-linked accounts will be visible and selectable in Adthena. If you have only MCC-linked accounts, you will see the standard screen to add Low-Bid campaigns.

To view your linked Google Ads accounts, go to the Google Ads Integration section under Settings in the top-right corner of the app. Your current linking method will also be indicated by an in-app prompt:

• First-Time Linking

  

• Upgrade Legacy Linking

  

Setup Instructions

FAQ 

Why has the CPC risen in main campaign?

The CPC increase in the main campaign is intentional and expected due to the removal of low-competition, lower-cost placements. This is because we are intentionally stopping ads that face lower competition and have lower CPCs, resulting in the remaining ads being from higher-cost auctions. However, the overall spend will reduce, aligning with our cost-saving goals.

Why shouldn't I increase the Low Bid max CPC?

The suggestion to increase the max CPC for the Low Bid campaign with 50% is not aligned with this logic. In fact, raising the max CPC:

• Creates internal competition between the Low Bid and Main campaigns.
• Drives up overall CPCs, negating the intended cost-saving effect.
• Can result in the Low Bid campaign bidding against the Main campaign for the same traffic, which is counterproductive.

Can I apply automated bidding to the Low-Bid campaign?

For the Low-Bid campaign, we strongly recommend using manual bidding only, and explicitly avoiding Smart Bidding or other automated strategies. Automated bidding tends to optimize too aggressively, potentially inflating CPCs by creating unnecessary internal competition between campaigns.

What’s the benefit of running a Low-Bid Campaign instead of just turning off Brand Activator to save on CPC? Wouldn’t the result be similar?

Not exactly. In most cases, the Low-Bid Campaign offers a meaningful cost saving while still maintaining brand visibility.

Example:

Let’s say you pay $1 per click on a brand term, which has a 50% Lone Ranger rate and gets 10,000 clicks per week. Here’s how the scenarios compare:

1. Standard Brand Activator (no bidding on Lone Rangers)
   • Saves $5,000 by not bidding on 50% of clicks
   • Highest savings, but may impact performance if organic coverage is weak
2. Low-Bid Campaign (bidding 10% of original CPC on Lone Rangers)
   • Saves $5,000 in the main brand campaign
   • Spends $500 through the low-bid campaign (at $0.10 CPC)
   • Net saving: $4,500, with some brand coverage maintained
3. No Brand Activator at all
   • Full spend of $10,000 on brand clicks
   • No cost savings and increased risk of losing brand visibility to competitors

Conclusion: Low-Bid Campaigns strike a balance between cost savings and maintaining presence on the SERP, whereas turning BA off completely could result in higher spend or missed traffic.

If competition is low, won’t CPCs drop on their own? What extra savings does the Low-Bid campaign offer?

Not necessarily. While CPCs often decrease slightly when no competitors are present, Google doesn’t automatically reduce your bids to the minimum possible, especially when using automated bidding strategies.

Automated strategies focus on meeting performance goals (like conversions or ROAS), not on minimizing cost per click. That means Google may still bid relatively high, even if no other advertisers are in the auction, as long as the strategy predicts the goal can still be achieved.

In contrast, the Low-Bid Campaign enforces a much lower bid (e.g., 10% of your usual CPC), which helps ensure you’re only paying the lowest viable amount to maintain visibility when competition drops.

How should we measure the success of a Low-Bid strategy over time?

The success metrics for a Low-Bid Campaign are largely the same as those used for standard Brand Activator setups. Key areas to monitor include:

• Cost savings
• Organic performance
• Overall revenue impact
• Overall impact on clicks

Do I need to exclude Brand Activator terms from PMax campaigns?

Yes. To ensure the Low-Bid Campaign works as intended and PMax doesn’t pick up the same traffic, it’s best to exclude Brand Activator terms from PMax.

Can I adjust CPCs while the Low-Bid Campaign is running?

Yes, you can adjust CPCs during the campaign. If it’s been running for a week or two and you’d like to increase or decrease bids, that’s perfectly fine.

Just keep in mind that frequent or significant changes—such as large CPC shifts or switching bid strategies—can affect performance and make it harder to measure results accurately. This is true for any kind of testing within Google Ads. To maintain clean insights, aim for controlled adjustments.

Do I need to include all Brand Activator terms in the low-bid campaign?

Whilst we recommend adding all Brand Activator terms to the low-bid campaign, you can choose to include only selected term(s) and keep the remaining terms solely in the standard BA campaign. However, in-app calculations are not currently compatible with mixed campaigns. If you exclude certain brand terms from the low-bid campaign, savings will need to be calculated manually using a Looker report. Please speak with your Customer Success Manager for support.

Can I remove the low-bid campaign setup?

Yes, to remove the low bid campaigns from Brand Activator, please action the following steps:

•  Pause the low-bid campaigns in your Adwords account.
• In Adthena, navigate to Brand Activator>Settings>Low-bid Campaigns and click "Remove" 

Once the low-bid campaign feature is deactivated in Brand Activator, the system will switch back to the standard savings calculation method, effective the next day.