A Portfolio Bid Strategy is a type of Smart Bidding in Google Ads that allows you to apply one bidding strategy across multiple campaigns, ad groups, or keywords.
Instead of setting individual bid strategies for each campaign, you can group them together and manage bidding in one place, making optimization easier and more efficient.
How Portfolio Bid Strategy works
- You create a bidding strategy (like Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize Conversions, or Maximize Conversion Value).
- You assign multiple campaigns, ad groups, or keywords to this single strategy.
- Google automatically adjusts bids across all included items to achieve your chosen goal.
This helps the algorithm learn faster and make better bid decisions because it has more data to work with.
When to use Portfolio Bid Strategy
Portfolio bidding works best when:
- You have multiple campaigns targeting similar goals (like sales or leads)
- You want to save time managing bids across campaigns
- You want to improve performance using aggregated data
It’s commonly used for:
- Large e-commerce accounts
- Multiple campaigns targeting the same audience or product category
- Cross-campaign budget optimization
Portfolio vs Individual Bid Strategies
- Individual Bid Strategy: Each campaign or ad group has its own bidding settings.
- Portfolio Bid Strategy: Multiple campaigns or ad groups share one bidding strategy, giving Google more data and flexibility for optimization.
Things to keep in mind
- Portfolio strategies work best when campaigns have similar performance goals
- Changing or removing campaigns from a portfolio can affect performance
- The system relies on accurate conversion tracking
In short
A Portfolio Bid Strategy lets you manage bids across multiple campaigns or ad groups together, making optimization faster and smarter by using aggregated data to hit your performance goals.