The Eligibility Check: Is This Account Ready for Smart Bidding?

Marketing Academy · Field Work●Paid Ads

MiniAudit· 20 minutes

Duolingo

Objective: Given a monthly conversion-volume and CPA export across 5 campaigns, apply the lesson's data thresholds to sort campaigns into 'stay on Manual CPC,' 'use Maximize Conversions first,' or 'eligible for Target CPA.'

You're the growth marketing analyst reviewing five regional Search campaigns for Duolingo Plus subscriptions before recommending a bidding-strategy rollout.

Use the lesson's 25/30/50-conversion thresholds, not intuition, to sort the campaigns and flag which low-volume ones should be pooled.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets

FreeSort campaigns by eligibility and test pooled totals

Free, works from a plain CSV export

Google Ads

FreePull the monthly conversion counts per campaign

Free to view for any account owner or manager

The process

2 steps

Step 01 of 02

The 30-50 monthly conversion threshold for smart bidding eligibility

The lesson sets a hard floor: accounts with fewer than 25 monthly conversions underperform on every bidding strategy, including manual. Target CPA needs at least 30, ideally 50+.

Five campaigns show monthly conversions of 12, 28, 34, 61, and 9. Which are eligible for Target CPA today, and which must stay on Manual CPC or Maximize Conversions?

Google Sheets— Import the 5-campaign conversion export and add an eligibility column.

Procedure

Import campaign-conversions.csv listing monthly conversions per campaign
Add an Eligibility column: below 25 = Manual CPC, 25-49 = Maximize Conversions (no target), 50+ = Target CPA ready
Sort the sheet by the Eligibility column

Sample output

Campaign                 Monthly Conversions   Eligibility
Duolingo Plus - US        61                     Target CPA ready
Duolingo Plus - India      34                    Maximize Conversions (no target)
Duolingo Plus - Brazil     28                    Maximize Conversions (no target)
Duolingo Plus - Germany    12                    Manual CPC
Duolingo Plus - Japan       9                    Manual CPC

Healthy

Only the US campaign (61 conversions) is recommended for Target CPA; Germany and Japan stay on Manual CPC until volume grows.

Unhealthy

Switching all five campaigns to Target CPA at once because 'smart bidding is supposed to be better,' including the two under 25 conversions.

What this means

Eligibility is a hard data floor, not a preference; below the threshold, every strategy including manual underperforms.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
Two campaigns sit under 25 monthly conversions	Leave them on Manual CPC and revisit after 60 days of volume growth	5 min
Two campaigns sit between 25 and 49 conversions	Move to Maximize Conversions with no target to build data, not straight to Target CPA	30 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Step 02 of 02

Portfolio bid strategies pooling low-volume campaigns

Portfolio bid strategies apply one Target CPA or Target ROAS across multiple campaigns, pooling their conversion data. This helps when individual campaigns are below threshold but the combined account clears it.

Germany (12) and Japan (9) are both under threshold individually. Combined, do they clear the 25-conversion floor for a pooled Maximize Conversions strategy?

Google Sheets— Same sheet, sum the two low-volume campaigns.

Procedure

Sum Germany's 12 and Japan's 9 monthly conversions
Compare the combined total against the 25-conversion floor
Flag both campaigns for a shared portfolio bid strategy if combined volume clears the floor

Sample output

Germany (12) + Japan (9) = 21 combined monthly conversions
Floor required: 25
Result: still below floor, do not pool yet; recheck after 30 more days of volume

Healthy

Combined volume is checked honestly (21 vs. 25 needed) instead of assuming pooling automatically fixes low volume.

Unhealthy

Pooling Germany and Japan into a portfolio strategy anyway because it 'feels' like enough combined traffic, without checking the number against the floor.

What this means

Portfolio bidding pools data, it doesn't invent it; the combined total still has to clear the same threshold.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
Combined conversions from two campaigns still fall under 25	Keep both on Manual CPC for another 30 days rather than pooling prematurely	5 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Final deliverable

A 5-campaign eligibility table with each campaign assigned to Manual CPC, Maximize Conversions, or Target CPA, plus a pooling recommendation for the two lowest-volume campaigns.

See a reference example

Sample output

Klaviyo, campaign eligibility audit (excerpt)

Campaign               Monthly Conversions   Eligibility
Klaviyo - Ecommerce     58                    Target CPA ready
Klaviyo - B2B            19                    Manual CPC

Pooling check: no second low-volume campaign to combine with B2B this quarter; keep on Manual CPC.

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

Correctly sorts all 5 campaigns using the 25/50 thresholds
Correctly computes the combined conversion total for the pooling check and compares it to the floor