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Marketing Academy · Field Work●Paid Ads
All projects·From: Google Search Ads
CoreSimulation· 35 minutes

The Bidding Strategy Call: Simulating Three Weeks of a New Search Campaign

Warby Parker

Objective: Make the bidding-strategy, negative-keyword, and Target CPA timing decisions a real Google Search Ads account manager faces across the first three weeks of a new campaign, and see the downstream consequences of each choice.

You're running Google Search Ads for Warby Parker's new prescription-sunglasses line launch, with a $600 weekly budget and a mandate to hit a sustainable cost per conversion within a month.

Decide when to switch from manual to automated bidding, how to react to early broad-match waste, and how to size a Target CPA target, without resetting Google's ability to optimize your account.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Ads
FreeRun the live campaign, read the dashboard and Search Terms report

The only place these bidding and match-type decisions actually happen

The process

Simulation

Day 3, first dashboard check

Day 3 of a 4-week launch

You launched three days ago on Manual CPC. Results look thin and you're tempted to hand bidding over to Google's algorithm immediately.

Sample output
Search campaign · Prescription Sunglasses · Day 3 of 28

  Impressions   9,120
  Clicks   310   CTR 3.4%
  Conversions   6   Cost per conv $48.70
  Bidding strategy   Manual CPC
Spend to date:$292.20 of $600 (week 1)
Budget remaining:$307.80

Six conversions in three days. Do you switch to Target CPA now to let Google optimize faster?

Run this for real insteadOptional

The simulation above is a complete project on its own, free, no account or spend required. This is only for learners who want to test the same decisions against a real live account.

Minimum spend:$600/week for 3-4 weeks
Minimum duration:21 days
Setup steps
  1. Launch a Manual CPC search campaign with 2-3 tightly themed ad groups
  2. Check the Search Terms report every 7 days and add negatives
  3. Track trailing-30-day conversion count before considering any automated bidding switch
Check-in schedule: Weekly, same day each week, comparing trailing conversion count against the 30-50 threshold

Final deliverable

A written log of the three bidding decisions made across the simulation, each with the dashboard number that drove it and the lesson passage that justified it.

See a reference example
Sample output
Lenskart, Search Ads launch decision log (excerpt)

Day 3: Stayed on Manual CPC. Only 5 conversions logged, below the 30-conversion threshold for Target CPA.
Day 10: Added 'frames repair' and 'glasses jobs' as negatives after the Search Terms report showed $71 of zero-conversion waste.
Day 20: Switched to Target CPA at $39, matching the trailing 30-day average of $38.60.

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

  • Never switches to automated bidding before the 30-50 conversion threshold is met
  • Fixes match-type waste with negatives rather than scaling budget through it
  • Sets a Target CPA close to the account's real trailing average, not an aspirational number