Keyword bidding can seem like an overwhelming task: How to bid, what to bid, and when to bid - there are many variables at play. In this series (I, II, III, and IV) we've outlined how to start looking at your keyword performance and use key performance indicators (KPIs) to adjust your bids:

1. Using Microsoft Advertising Intelligence monetization data, you can see the average advertiser data across keywords in the Bing marketplace. Seeing the variance in KPIs can help you plan your bids for high volume keywords.

2. Keyword-level analysis can typically be done by a single person, whereas advanced portfolio-level analysis can require a lot of resources.

3. When making bid changes, keep your goals in mind: Are you trying to maintain a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), or another goal?

4. By using all of the data available to you, you can adjust your bids based on performance - making sure you are getting the most return on investment for your search advertising campaign.

Now we'd like to open up the topic of bidding concepts and strategies to discussion:

• How are you optimizing your bids?
  • In the past when I was working for a retail company, we optimized bids based on a CPO goal. Later, the company moved to margin based bidding.
• How are you accounting for seasonality?
  • Before peak seasons I like to take a look-back at what keywords performed best the prior year. Where are those keywords today? Do I need to increase bids on them?
• What do you with keywords that have no conversion data?
  • A question that plagues many of us in search engine marketing. You don't want to kill a keyword too soon, but you also don't want to lose money letting it run.

Also, please let us know if there is a specific topic or strategy you'd like us to delve deeper on and write about!