Managing an AdWords account can be really time consuming and unproductive if only done manually. Google is working on multiple ways to make the process automatic and eventually will replace all manual settings with ready automation. To be prepared for this change when it happens, it would be great to start using automation now. It will save you a lot of time and help you improve your results

1. Optimise your campaign. In the settings of every campaign you have a choice of optimisations. They are machine learning based solutions to rotate your ads and achieve a certain goal. The default one is optimise for clicks. I usually avoid this one, but if you have a brand-new campaign it might be worth testing. Once there is enough conversion data, you can switch to “optimize for conversions”

2. Bidding Strategies. You can choose when to pay and how much to pay for a click. CPA stands for cost per acquisition. This is a great way to adjust your account, if you are an e-commerce or any kind of business which gets a large amount of conversions. Google will automatically adjust your bid for you depending on how much you are willing to pay for one conversion. You must think also how much a conversion is worth to you. You don’t want to spend $100 to sell a product which costs $20.

3. Automated rules. You can create plenty of rules which can be really effective when it come so budget allocation. You can schedule your campaign, ad group or ad to be paused when it reaches certain number of clicks, conversions, or cost. There are tens of other different ways you can set up your rule – bounce rate, cost per click, video views, Gmail saves. You can decide if you want to run the rule daily, weekly or only once. Google can send you an email once the rule has been activated.

4. Device bidding. This is a great way to automate increase of bid if you are bidding manually. If you know that most of your conversions are happening on a mobile device, you can make +40% bid adjustment when your ad is showing on mobile. In this way, you will be getting a higher position and more likely to show on first page. On a mobile device, there are only four positions, so your average ad position must be more than 2.5.
5. You can also schedule the ad to run during particular times of the day and make minus bid adjustments during “low hours. To estimate which the best times for your business are, you can access the time report in Dimensions. You would be able to see if you have strong performing days of the week or hours when you get a lot of conversions.

5. Location bidding. In Dimensions you can also access a geo report which can give you an idea which cities or countries are giving you the highest amount of conversions. You can then choose either to only target them, or to increase bid for these locations to appear higher on the results.

These are all very simple ways to automate your advertising and get a better performance. There are more sophisticated ways like writing simple Java scripts to run specific rules. In most cases, you can easily run your account with only a few rules.