What is the Maximize Conversion Value strategy on Google Ads?

Understanding the Maximize Conversion Value bidding strategy

What it is (in plain English)

Maximize Conversion Value is an automated bidding strategy that prioritizes revenue (or whatever “value” you assign to a conversion) over sheer lead volume. Instead of trying to get the most conversions for your budget, it tries to get the highest total conversion value possible within your daily budget. If two clicks are available and one is more likely to produce a higher-value sale or a more valuable lead, this strategy is designed to bid more aggressively for that opportunity.

How it decides what to bid

This strategy uses auction-time signals to adjust bids for each individual search (and other eligible auctions, depending on campaign type). Practically, that means bids can shift dramatically based on the likelihood of generating higher conversion value—taking into account intent and context signals that often correlate with purchase size, product mix, or lead quality. Because this is value-focused, it’s not just asking, “Will this convert?” It’s asking, “How much value is this conversion likely to produce?”

Maximize Conversion Value vs. Maximize Conversions (the difference that matters)

Maximize Conversions is volume-first: it hunts for the most conversions it can produce for your budget, even if many of those conversions are lower quality or lower value. Maximize Conversion Value is profit/revenue-first (as much as your tracking allows): it pushes spend toward queries, audiences, devices, and contexts that are more likely to produce higher-value outcomes. If you sell products at multiple price points or you have leads with different downstream value, this distinction is the whole game.

What you need in place to make it work well

Accurate conversion value tracking (this is non-negotiable)

Maximize Conversion Value is only as smart as the values you feed it. For ecommerce, that usually means passing actual purchase revenue (and ideally net revenue signals when possible). For lead generation, it means assigning realistic values to key actions—like qualified form fills, booked calls, or verified applications—so the system can learn what “better” looks like.

If all conversions are valued the same (or if values are wildly inconsistent), this strategy can still run, but it may optimize toward the wrong outcomes—like “easy” conversions that look valuable on paper but don’t translate into real business results.

Enough conversion volume and value variation to learn

In real accounts, performance stabilizes faster when you have consistent conversion flow and meaningful differences in conversion value. If you only get a handful of conversions per month, or every conversion is assigned the same value, the strategy has very little signal to separate high-value traffic from low-value traffic.

Clean conversion goal selection (don’t let noise steer the bids)

Make sure the conversions used for bidding truly represent business outcomes you want more of. A common mistake is including micro-conversions (like “page view,” “add to cart,” or “time on site”) as primary bidding goals when the campaign is meant to drive revenue or qualified leads. If low-intent actions carry value (explicitly or implicitly), the strategy may optimize toward them because they’re abundant and “cheap,” even if they don’t move ROI.

How to optimize ad spend and ROI with Maximize Conversion Value

Use Target ROAS when you need efficiency control (and know the trade-off)

Maximize Conversion Value can be used on its own, or you can add a Target ROAS (return on ad spend) to guide efficiency. Without a target, it typically pushes to capture as much total value as possible for the budget—often behaving more aggressively in auctions where it predicts high-value outcomes. Adding a Target ROAS usually tightens efficiency, but it can also reduce volume if the target is set above what the market and your account can realistically deliver.

If you’re coming from manual bidding or a strict CPA mindset, the safest approach is usually to start with Maximize Conversion Value without a tight ROAS constraint, then layer in Target ROAS once you’ve confirmed value tracking is correct and performance is directionally strong.

Budget strategy: avoid starving the learning system

This strategy works best when it has room to explore and enough daily budget to participate in auctions that can produce value. If your budget is too low relative to your conversion cycle, it may not gather enough signal to consistently find high-value users. If your budget is frequently capped early in the day, you may also miss higher-value searches that happen later—depending on your category and audience behavior.

Make your values more “bid-friendly” (especially for lead gen)

For lead generation, the biggest performance leap usually comes from improving how values reflect true business quality. If you can’t import offline outcomes yet, use a value model that at least distinguishes between “high-intent” and “low-intent” leads (for example, booked appointment vs. generic contact form). When every lead is treated as equal value, the system can’t justify paying more for higher-quality prospects.

Practical campaign improvements that compound value-based bidding

Value-based bidding rewards clarity. The clearer your ads and landing pages are about what you sell and who it’s for, the more consistently the strategy can match intent to high-value outcomes. Tighten your messaging so users self-select correctly; reduce friction on high-margin or priority products/services; and ensure your landing page experience matches the promise of the ad so you don’t “buy” expensive clicks that fail to convert.

Critical diagnostics checklist when results drop

• Confirm conversion values didn’t change: check recent tracking updates, currency issues, duplicate firing, or missing transaction values.
• Validate which conversions are included in bidding: ensure only true primary outcomes (or properly valued outcomes) are steering bids.
• Look for mix shifts: confirm the campaign isn’t drifting toward lower-margin products, low-quality lead types, or regions/devices that convert cheaply but poorly.
• Review budget constraints: if capped, you may be forcing the strategy to take whatever value it can find early rather than the best value across the day.
• Check for creative/landing page mismatch: rising click volume with falling value often points to promise-to-page disconnect or broader matching pulling in weaker intent.

Common mistakes (and how to avoid them)

Assigning “hopeful” lead values instead of realistic values

If you tell the system a low-quality lead is worth the same as a sales-qualified lead, it will treat them as equals and chase the easiest ones. Use grounded values based on close rates, average deal size, or at least stage-based proxies (qualified vs. unqualified). Even imperfect-but-directional values are usually better than flat values.

Setting an aggressive Target ROAS too early

A high Target ROAS can sound like a quick fix for profitability, but it often throttles delivery if the account hasn’t learned stable value patterns yet. The outcome is usually volatile volume, missed auctions, and performance that looks “safe” but under-delivers on total value. Stabilize first, then tighten efficiency in steps.

Judging performance too quickly during transitions

Any change in bidding strategy, goals, conversion definitions, or value logic can cause a learning period where results fluctuate. Value-based bidding, in particular, can look “worse” before it looks better if it starts reallocating spend away from low-value conversions you were previously counting as wins. Evaluate performance using conversion value and profitability metrics, not just conversion count.

Ignoring product/service economics

If your business has very different margins by product, category, or customer type, pure revenue-based optimization can accidentally favor high-revenue, low-margin sales. Where possible, align tracked values closer to margin or predicted lifetime value, so “more value” also means “better business.”

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Setting Up Maximize Conversion Value Bidding Strategy

Prerequisites Before Using Maximize Conversion Value

Before enabling the Maximize Conversion Value bidding strategy, ensure you meet these key requirements:

1. Set up conversion tracking with transaction-specific values: You must track conversions and assign a monetary value to each conversion action. This allows Google Ads to optimize bids based on the value generated, not just the number of conversions. For example, if you're tracking sales, the conversion value should be the order amount, like $50 for a product purchase.
2. Maintain consistent conversion values: If you recently changed how conversion values are calculated, wait at least 2 weeks before switching to Maximize Conversion Value. Google's machine learning algorithms need time to calibrate to the new data. Changing conversion values frequently can lead to suboptimal results.

According to Google's documentation, campaigns should also have at least 30 conversions in the past 30 days before enabling this strategy. This ensures the algorithm has sufficient data to make informed bidding decisions.

Enabling Maximize Conversion Value for a Single Campaign

To set up Maximize Conversion Value bidding for an individual campaign, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account and navigate to the Campaigns tab.
2. Select the campaign you want to edit.
3. Click on the Settings tab and scroll down to the Bidding section.
4. Click on Change bid strategy and select Maximize conversion value from the dropdown menu.
5. Set your target ROAS (return on ad spend) if desired. For example, a target ROAS of 150% means you want to generate $1.50 in conversion value for every $1 in ad spend.
6. Click Save to apply the new bidding strategy.

Using Maximize Conversion Value as a Portfolio Bid Strategy

Portfolio bid strategies allow you to apply Maximize Conversion Value across multiple campaigns simultaneously:

1. Navigate to the Tools & Settings menu and select Shared Library.
2. Click on Portfolio bid strategies and select + to create a new strategy.
3. Give your strategy a name, select Maximize conversion value as the strategy type, and set a target ROAS if applicable.
4. Click Save to create the portfolio strategy.
5. To add campaigns, click on the strategy name, then select Add campaigns. Choose the campaigns to include and click Save.

Using a portfolio bid strategy can help optimize performance across your entire account rather than individual campaigns. However, only include campaigns with similar KPIs and conversion types for best results.

Adjusting Conversion Values with Rules

Conversion value rules let you automatically adjust conversion values based on specific criteria, like audience or device. Some examples:

• Increase conversion values by 25% for customers who purchase within 1 day of clicking an ad, since these may be higher-value users.
• Reduce conversion values by 10% for mobile app conversions if data shows these users tend to spend less than those on desktop.
• Adjust values based on a customer's geographic location, like increasing values by 30% for high-income zip codes.

To create a conversion value rule:

1. Go to Tools & Settings > Measurement > Conversions.
2. Click on the conversion action you want to adjust and select Edit settings.
3. Under Value, click on Add a rule and define the relevant criteria and value adjustment.
4. Click Save to apply the rule.

Maximize Conversion Value is a Google Ads Smart Bidding strategy that automatically sets bids in real time to generate the highest possible total conversion value within your daily budget, prioritizing higher-value purchases or leads rather than simply increasing the number of conversions. To make it work well, you need reliable conversion value tracking (ecommerce revenue, tiered lead values, or offline values), a clean set of primary conversion goals that reflect real business outcomes, and enough volume and budget for the algorithm to learn; you can also add an optional Target ROAS to steer efficiency, but it’s usually best introduced gradually once your values and performance are stable. If you want a lighter way to keep an eye on value signals, budgets, landing-page alignment, and goal setup, Blobr connects to your Google Ads and runs specialized AI agents that continuously surface practical recommendations you can review and apply on your terms.