How Quality Score relates to Cost-per-acquisition CPA

[rfjc]

I'm running purely CPA campaigns at the moment and I'm wondering if my Quality Score is at all relevant. My understanding is that Quality Score is closely tied to clicks, so if I'm not targetting that (but conversions instead) then the Quality Score is not something I need to pay any attention too. In fact, it seems kind of irrelevant.

Do any experts out there agree or disagree? I would love some clarity!

I've never seen Google refer to conversions or CPA when it talks about Quality Score.

[DanDeceuster]

Always pay attention to quality score. Your position in the paid ads section is dependent upon your quality score and your bid. The higher your quality score, the less you need to bid to show up higher. The lower your quality score, the higher you have to bid and at times it still doesn't matter, you can't outrank those with high quality scores.

If you want to lower your cost per click and thus lower the cost per acquisition, focus on getting a higher quality score. You will get better rankings, more clicks and pay less per click.

[rfjc]

Dan, thanks for replying! I guess what I don't get is how it really relates to CPA. With CPA, aren't clicks and position really irrlevant? Isn't Google looking solely at getting me as many conversion at the cost I specify and within my budget?

Sorry, if it sounds like I've just asked the exact same question. I'm struggling to understand it!

[RogerGreene]

What Dan is saying is that your quality score will directly affect your Cost Per Click and thus your CPA. If you're paying more per click, you're probably paying more per acquisition.

There are a lot of ways to lower your CPA, one aspect of that would be to improve your Quality Score.

[DavidKonigsberg]

When you say you are running a cpa model is that "Focus on conversions (Conversion Optimizer)"  in google adwords on the search network?

If So Then they are correct google is still using its regular algorithm which includes quality score they just make the management changes for you based on data