How Acquisio Does Predictive Automation Best

We keep saying our Bid & Budget Management solution is one of the best automated PPC solutions available, but it’s about time we explain why. It’s simple: we surpass our competitors because we use predictive optimization more effectively, with adaptive high frequency bidding.

Predictive has become somewhat of a buzzword, with other major players like Marin Software and Kenshoo offering predictive optimization as well. As the name would suggest, predictive refers to a PPC automation solutions that predicts what will happen in the market and bid accordingly.

But even using historical data to predict what bids will be most effective has its issues. You can’t bank on one prediction per day in such an unpredictable and erratic market.

Think about the weather. While it is possible to predict weather for weeks in advance, if you want pinpoint accuracy, it’s less likely to make an accurate prediction more than 24 hours in advance than it is to boast 100% accuracy when predicting the weather in the next hour or so.

Acquisio provides updated predictions every half hour – telling you exactly when it’s going to rain – while our main competitors are still guessing the weather day by day.

Acquisio’s optimization solution makes nearly 50x more predictions than other predictive models, adjusting bids according to new predictions set every half hour of the day. With 48 predictions a day versus 1, that positions us as the most accurate predictive model in relation to bids and budget constraints.

The Downside of Other Predictive Models

The major issue that we, at Acquisio, experienced was that predictions often miss the mark. Here’s an example:

If a predictive solution is running for a while, it begins to learn peak times for conversions, lulls and moments of opportunity in the PPC auction. If Tuesdays are low days, each Tuesday the bids will be set at a certain rate to reflect the data from all the previous Tuesdays recorded.

But what happens if one Tuesday, your industry is covered by The New York Times and searches related to your PPC keywords skyrocket? One shot predictive marketing won’t account for that surge in searches when setting the bids for that day. You’ll end up overpaying or running out of budget. More predictions equals more accuracy, and that’s how we’ve achieved such success at Acquisio.

The Differentiator

The main issue with the above situation is that it’s easy to react and respond once you see something is or isn’t working, but other predictive offerings simply don’t accommodate those situations.

What Acquisio’s software does is update every half an hour – more than any other automation solution in the world – to make sure that once bids are set, they are helping to generate the most possible conversions. Other optimization solutions only update daily, which means that if something unpredictable happens in the auction, improvements won’t be made until the next day, when the change is likely irrelevant.

If campaigns are not performing well, or if campaigns are performing so well we should lower the bids to maintain the performance at a lower cost without running out of budget, Acquisio’s Bid & Budget Management solution will then adjust the max CPC to stimulate better results.

In The New York Times instance, you wouldn’t have known when that coverage would be released or how it would affect your business, so you could not have planned or predicted how to set bids effectively. With updates every half hour instead of daily, Acquisio is one of the only optimization solutions on the market that can adapt and adjust throughout the day to make sure there is never a time when PPC budget is wasted or misused.

Other predictive optimization solutions simply can’t do that.

To learn more about how Bid & Budget Management works, read the full explanation from Chief Scientist, Bryan Minor.