The Google AdWords blog has announced the introduction of Enhanced CPC, a new automated bidding feature that can help advertisers improve the ROI of their campaigns through manual bidding.

By using a campaign's historical conversion tracking data, the Enhanced CPC system will automatically adjust the maximum CPC (cost per click) bid for a keyword based on the likelihood that the ad will convert. As a result, Google says that advertisers should receive more conversions while maintaining or reducing their overall CPA (cost per acquisition).

Enhanced CPC has the unique ability to consider a number of factors when predicting the likelihood of a conversion and may adjust a bid depending on how well a particular search or display network partner site in the Google network has converted in the past. It will also recognise when specific words within a search phrase convert well and so adjust a bid when users search on variations of these terms. Google says that the system will also detect attributes such as the user's location, language settings, browser, and operating system and analyze how these attributes may impact the likelihood of an advert converting.

This certainly sounds like an impressive new feature and one that could help advertisers achieve better results with reduced effort. However, like all elements of an AdWords campaign, this will need to be tested and the more conversion data to work from, the better. Some of Google's automated tools have not worked well for some AdWords advertisers in the past so it may work well for some and not others, so this is another aspect to test!