After you make a change to your automated bid strategy, the campaign or portfolio needs some time to calibrate towards the new goal. To indicate this, a "Learning" status may be shown. Learn more About bid strategy statuses.
This article will help you to understand the duration of the learning period for campaigns and the different factors that affect it.
Note: Bid strategy statuses aren't available with Hotel campaigns.
Where can I see whether my campaign is still learning?
You can see whether your campaign is still learning by consulting its bid status. If it indicates “Learning”, you can hover over to show which of the following 3 reasons explains why your bid strategy currently has a "Learning" status.
- New strategy: The bid strategy was recently created or reactivated. Google Ads is now adjusting to optimize your bids.
- Setting change: A setting for the bid strategy was changed. Google Ads is now adjusting to optimize your bids.
- Composition change: Campaigns, ad groups, or keywords have been added to or removed from the bid strategy. Google Ads is now adjusting to optimize your bids.
Our algorithms continue to learn even when the bidding status no longer shows “Learning”.
What affects the duration of the learning period?
The duration of the learning period is primarily affected by 3 factors:
- The number of conversions that your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, or products obtain.
- The duration of your conversion cycles. For example, the amount of time it takes for a click to result in a conversion.
- The bid strategy (for example, Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value). The learning period isn’t applicable to Manual CPC.
It can take up to around 50 conversion events or 3 conversion cycles for the bid strategy to calibrate to the new objective, although it can be faster depending on the amount of conversion data present. Conversion data from previous campaigns can help drive faster results by speeding up the initial learning period required for Smart Bidding to calibrate towards your business goals.
