Log into a new Google Ads account and one of the first choices you’re asked to make is a bidding strategy. There are half a dozen options, several with names that sound almost identical to each other, and Google’s recommended default isn’t always the right fit for a small local business with a modest budget. Getting this setting wrong doesn’t just waste a bit of money, it can mean the account spends weeks chasing the wrong outcome before anyone notices.
Manual CPC: the option nobody defaults to any more
Manual CPC is the original way of bidding: you set a maximum cost per click for each keyword and Google enters that bid into the auction on your behalf. It’s still available, and Enhanced CPC lets Google nudge your manual bids up or down based on how likely a click is to convert. In practice, very few accounts run on pure Manual CPC today. Automated strategies use far more signals, such as device, time of day, location and browsing history, than a person adjusting bids by hand ever could, and Google’s own guidance steers most new campaigns towards an automated option instead (determine a bid strategy based on your goals).
Maximize Clicks: fine for getting started, not for judging success
Maximize Clicks sets your bids automatically to get as many clicks as possible within your daily budget, and you can still cap the maximum CPC it’s allowed to bid (about Maximize Clicks bidding). It’s a sensible strategy for a brand-new campaign with no conversion data yet, because there’s nothing else for Google to optimise towards. The catch is that it optimises purely for traffic. A campaign can hit its click target and its budget every single day while bringing in almost no enquiries, because nothing in the strategy cares whether a click turns into a customer.
Maximize Conversions and Target CPA
Once a campaign has some conversion tracking in place, Maximize Conversions tries to get as many conversions as possible from your budget, without a specific cost target. Target CPA does the same job but lets you set a cost per action you’re aiming for, so the bidding leans harder on quality over pure volume (about Target CPA bidding). Say a kitchen fitter in Stroud reckons a genuine enquiry is worth chasing up to around £25 in ad spend. Setting a Target CPA close to that figure gives the system something concrete to aim for, rather than simply spending the daily budget as fast as it can.
Google changed how these targets behave in August 2026. Previously, a campaign limited by a modest daily budget could end up performing well ahead of its target, for example averaging £12 in cost per conversion against a £25 target, without the account spending any more to take advantage of that headroom. Since the update, the system tracks more closely to the target you’ve actually set, even when the budget is tight (changes to target-based bid strategies). If your account has been running comfortably under its Target CPA for a while, it’s worth checking performance since the update rather than assuming nothing has moved.
Maximize Conversion Value and Target ROAS
These work the same way as Maximize Conversions and Target CPA, except they optimise for the value of each conversion rather than the number of them. Target ROAS asks for a return on ad spend goal, say 400%, meaning £4 of value for every £1 spent, and bids more aggressively for searches Google predicts are likely to convert at a higher value (about Target ROAS bidding). This only really earns its keep where conversions genuinely carry different values: an online shop selling products from £15 to £150, say, or a service business tracking quote value rather than just a form fill. If every enquiry is worth roughly the same to you, Target CPA is the simpler and more appropriate choice.
None of this works without accurate tracking first
Every automated strategy beyond Maximize Clicks is only as good as the conversion data feeding it. If the account is counting every form submission as a conversion, including the ones from job applicants or people trying to sell you something, Google will happily optimise towards getting you more of exactly that. We’ve covered the most common ways this goes wrong in our guide to conversion tracking mistakes that skew your data, and it’s worth checking before you change a bid strategy, not after.
Choosing between them
As a rough starting point:
- A brand-new campaign with no conversion history: Maximize Clicks, moving to a conversion-based strategy once you’ve built up a reasonable spread of conversions to learn from.
- A service business where most enquiries are worth roughly the same: Maximize Conversions, then Target CPA once you know what an enquiry is actually worth to you.
- A shop, or a business with a wide range of order or quote values: Maximize Conversion Value or Target ROAS.
Google doesn’t publish a fixed number of conversions you need before switching, but a strategy with almost no history to learn from tends to behave erratically at first, so give any new setting a proper run rather than judging it after a few days.
Give it time, and watch the right numbers
Smart Bidding strategies need time to learn, and changing them too often, such as switching strategy every time a week looks disappointing, resets that learning each time. Watch cost per conversion or ROAS over at least two to three weeks after a change rather than day to day, and make sure the budget itself is realistic for the strategy you’ve chosen, since a daily budget that’s too tight will fight against almost any target you set.
Get a second opinion on your account
If you’re not sure which strategy your account is actually running, or whether it’s set up sensibly for what you’re trying to achieve, our Google Ads management service includes exactly this kind of account review. Get in touch and we’ll take a look.
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