How to Change Your Bidding Strategy in Google Ads?

Choose the Right Bidding Strategy Before You Change Anything

Changing a bidding strategy isn’t just a “settings tweak” in Google Ads—it changes how the system prioritizes auctions, how fast it spends budget, and what success looks like (clicks, impression share, conversions, or conversion value). If you switch strategies without aligning the goal, conversion tracking, and budget, you can create a short-term performance dip that’s completely avoidable.

Start by deciding what you’re truly optimizing for. If your priority is lead volume or purchase volume, conversion-based bidding is usually the right direction. If your conversions have meaningfully different values (for example, $50 vs. $500 orders, or low-margin vs. high-margin products), value-based bidding tends to be the better long-term foundation—assuming you’re reliably sending conversion values.

Important context most advertisers miss (and why your interface may look different)

In Search campaigns, there was a structural shift where “Target CPA” and “Target ROAS” became optional target settings within “Maximize conversions” and “Maximize conversion value.” Practically, the behavior is the same: Maximize conversions with a target CPA behaves like Target CPA, and Maximize conversion value with a target ROAS behaves like Target ROAS. This matters because you may think you’re “switching strategies” when you’re really just adding/removing a target within the same strategy family.

Also, Enhanced CPC (ECPC) was deprecated for Search and Display campaigns effective the week of March 31, 2025. If you previously relied on ECPC, many accounts ended up effectively running Manual CPC instead. That change alone has pushed a lot of advertisers to revisit bidding—so if your account history includes ECPC, don’t assume today’s setup is what you intended a year ago.

How to Change Your Bidding Strategy in Google Ads (Step-by-Step)

There are two common ways to change bidding: at the single-campaign level (most typical), or in bulk across multiple campaigns. The “right” method depends on how standardized you want your bidding and whether you need a shared (portfolio) strategy.

Option A: Change bidding for one campaign (most common)

• Go to the campaign you want to update.
• Open Settings, then open the Bidding section.
• Click Change bid strategy.
• Select the strategy you want (for example, Maximize conversions, Maximize conversion value, Maximize clicks, Target impression share, or Manual CPC where available).
• Save.

Once you switch, immediately double-check any strategy-specific fields that appear (like target CPA, target ROAS, or a Max CPC cap). These settings often matter more than the strategy label itself.

Option B: Change bidding for multiple campaigns at once (bulk change)

• Go to the Campaigns table.
• Select the campaigns you want to change.
• Click Edit and choose Change bid strategy.
• Pick the new strategy (or apply a shared/portfolio strategy) and apply.

This is ideal when you’re standardizing bidding across a tightly related set of campaigns (for example, a set of brand Search campaigns moving to Target impression share, or a set of lead-gen campaigns moving to Maximize conversions with a target CPA).

Option C: Use a portfolio (shared) bidding strategy across campaigns

Portfolio strategies are useful when multiple campaigns should be optimized together toward a single goal (for example, a blended CPA across several non-brand campaigns). You can create portfolio bid strategies from the shared bidding area and then attach campaigns to them.

• Go to the tools area for budgets and bidding, then open Bid strategies.
• Create a new portfolio bid strategy, name it clearly, and set its targets/settings.
• Select which campaigns to include now (and you can add more later).

One practical tip from years of account cleanups: if you’re going portfolio, be disciplined about campaign grouping. Mixing very different intents (brand + non-brand, or prospecting + remarketing) into one portfolio strategy often blurs performance targets and makes diagnosing changes harder.

Option D: Change bidding in bulk using Google Ads Editor

If you manage lots of campaigns, Google Ads Editor can be a time-saver. You can select one or more campaigns and change the bid strategy from the editing panel. You can also import bid strategy changes via bulk workflows (for example, CSV-based updates), which is helpful when you’re migrating many campaigns at once.

What Changes After You Switch (Learning, Spend Patterns, and Controls)

The biggest mistake I see is judging success too quickly. Switching bidding strategies can trigger a recalibration period where performance looks unstable, not because the strategy is “bad,” but because the system is adapting to new objectives and constraints.

Expect a learning period (and don’t fight it)

After a meaningful bid strategy change—or even a major target change—the campaign can enter a learning phase. The time required varies, but a useful operational guideline is that it can take up to roughly 50 conversion events or about 3 conversion cycles for the strategy to calibrate. If your conversions take a week to show up, your evaluation window must be longer than a few days, or you’ll make decisions based on incomplete data.

Even when “Learning” is no longer displayed, algorithms continue to learn. That’s why “set it and forget it” is wrong—but “change it every day” is even worse.

Budget behavior can change dramatically (especially with value-based bidding)

Some strategies will actively try to spend your daily budget. In particular, if you move to Maximize conversion value without a target ROAS, it can push spend up to fully utilize budget. If you’re currently underspending for structural reasons (tight targeting, limited keywords, limited eligibility), that’s one thing. But if you’re underspending because your bids were conservative, switching strategies can unlock more auctions and spend faster than you expect.

If you recently started sending conversion values (or changed how values are reported), it’s smart to let value reporting stabilize before you fully commit to value-based bidding. Consistent, comparable value data is the fuel that makes target ROAS and Maximize conversion value work.

Your manual controls may stop working the way you expect

When you move to conversion-based Smart Bidding (like Maximize conversions or Maximize conversion value), most bid adjustments are not used. The common exception across several automated strategies is that you can still apply a -100% device adjustment to fully exclude a device.

For Target impression share, the system is also using real-time signals to pursue your placement and impression share goal, so existing bid adjustments generally won’t be used (again, with the same -100% device exclusion concept).

How to adjust targets safely (so you don’t whiplash performance)

Target changes can move spend and volume quickly. When you adjust a target CPA or target ROAS, the system can begin optimizing toward the new goal within minutes, but because conversions are delayed, you should typically wait 1–2 conversion cycles before you evaluate whether the new target is truly working. Avoid stacking multiple target changes inside a single conversion cycle unless there’s a real business emergency—doing so makes clean measurement almost impossible.

Use the right reporting to judge the change

After switching, don’t rely on top-level account impressions like “it feels worse.” Instead, use bid strategy reporting that shows you strategy status, conversion delay context, and strategy-specific scorecards. This is also where you’ll see whether the strategy is constrained (for example, by inventory or bid limits) versus simply recalibrating.

Advanced Safeguards: Seasonality Adjustments and Data Exclusions (When a Bid Strategy Change Isn’t Enough)

Seasonality adjustments: for short, exceptional events (not everyday promos)

If you know conversion rates will change substantially for a short period (think flash sale behavior), seasonality adjustments can inform Smart Bidding about expected conversion-rate shifts. This is an advanced tool best reserved for major, short events—typically in the 1–7 day range—because Smart Bidding already accounts for normal seasonality patterns. Using it too broadly (or too long) can do more harm than good.

Data exclusions: protect Smart Bidding during tracking outages

If conversion tracking breaks, Smart Bidding will optimize on bad inputs—often the fastest way to destroy performance. Data exclusions are designed for periods where conversion data is missing or incorrect (tag problems, upload disruptions, or accidental misfires). If you apply a data exclusion for an outage window, don’t remove it after the fact, and be cautious with backfilling conversions—backfilled data can cause undesirable bidding swings. If you do plan to backfill for reporting reasons, it’s typically better to wait before doing so.

Troubleshooting: If Performance Drops After Changing Bidding Strategy

When results dip after a switch, the instinct is to revert immediately. Sometimes that’s right—but most of the time, the fix is more surgical: align goals, remove constraints, and give the strategy enough clean data to operate.

Use this quick diagnostic checklist before you “panic switch” again

• Did you change the bid strategy and the conversion goal at the same time? If yes, you’ve changed both the steering wheel and the destination—separate them when possible.
• Is conversion tracking stable and using the conversions you actually want to optimize? If you optimized to the wrong conversion action (or wrong category of goal), bidding will faithfully maximize the wrong thing.
• Is your target realistic? An overly aggressive CPA or ROAS target can throttle spend, reduce auction competitiveness, and look like “the strategy isn’t working.”
• Did you cap bids (Max CPC limits) too tightly? This is especially common with Maximize clicks and Target impression share.
• Are you evaluating too early? If you haven’t waited at least one full conversion cycle (or enough conversions), you’re judging incomplete data.

If you want the cleanest possible transition, consider keeping the same bid strategy and changing only what the strategy optimizes for (the conversion goals), once you’ve ensured the “new” conversions are being tracked consistently for a couple of conversion cycles. That approach often reduces volatility compared to switching strategy and goals simultaneously.

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When you change a bidding strategy in Google Ads, the real work is making sure the switch matches your goal (conversion volume vs. conversion value), that tracking and conversion values are reliable, and that you give Smart Bidding enough time to learn before judging results—especially now that Target CPA and Target ROAS live as optional targets inside the “Maximize” strategies. If you’d rather not handle all the auditing, target adjustments, and post-change monitoring manually, Blobr connects to your Google Ads account and runs specialized AI agents that continuously analyze performance and surface clear, prioritized actions—so you can make bidding changes with more confidence while staying fully in control of what gets applied.