Great post – you’ve hit the nail on the head here:

“By letting a program do all the bidding for you, regardless of how long you’ve been involved in search and know the rules, you will begin to lose focus on what is the ideal combination of bids and ad copy for a given keyword and become more reliant on the program to continue.”

The thing I don’t like about bid automation technologies is how they lead you into a false sense of security. “My bids are being taken care of”, so you lose touch with bidding and how each keyword relates to the overall performance of your account. In my experience, I find that the process of making bid changes allows me to brainstorm new ideas for keywords, match types, negatives, ads and landing pages. It helps me take ownership of the campaign and better understand what is and isn’t working. Computers are far from replacing the human element to paid search management, so we should be careful how much faith we put in them.
.-= Alan Mitchell´s last blog ..The 10% Clicks Rule Part 3: Does It Work? =-.