About the author
Josh Haynes is a PPC expert with 13 years’ experience scaling volumes and profit for ecommerce and lead generation businesses. He has worked with multimillion-pound businesses and has scaled his own ecommerce business from scratch.
In this article
- What has Google changed and why?
- How does this work in reality?
- What’s the right action to take?
- What about if you want to scale?
- Important questions to consider
What’s more important to your business? Traffic, leads and order volumes, or profit? Profit is the obvious answer. It’s the bottom line. It’s what you see in your bank account at the end of the month – although volume plays a key role in driving that profit.
Google’s recent bidding strategy change might have got you thinking about how you can make your investment go further.
What has Google changed and why?
You might think that your campaign beating your ROAS or CPA target is positive. And it might be. Before the change, Google would generate conversions at the best possible return, perhaps beating your target if the cost-per-click and conversion rate allowed.
Google’s change, which came into effect on 17th August 2026, means it will now just work to generate conversion at your target. That means you might see your CPA jump up, or your ROAS decrease, if you were previously beating your target.
Google has pitched the change as a way to help advertisers scale, as it will allow you to generate more leads or revenue at your current targets when the budget is increased. It’s true, it will help you scale (more on this later), but it may also be costing you in terms of wasted budget right now.
The issue is that most businesses have budgets to stick to, and don’t have unlimited cash to throw at Google. This means that if you don’t make any changes, Google will simply start to generate your returns at your current target.
How does this work in reality?
If your target is 500% and you’ve previously been achieving 600%, your new reality will be 500%, because that’s your target. That’s 20% less revenue for the same investment overnight.
The same goes for campaigns using CPA as a target. An actual CPA of £8 in a campaign with £10 as a target means your new actual CPA will be £10.
What’s the right action to take?
The first thing you need to know is whether your campaign is affected by the change. This is quite straightforward. Start by looking at your target vs your current performance. If you’re beating your target (for example, 600% ROAS vs a 500% target), check if your campaign is limited by budget. We recommend that action is needed for any campaign that is beating target with more than 5% impression share lost in the past 30 days.
If you have a campaign that is beating target, but is limited by budget, and you need to keep within your current budget, adjust your target to the level your campaign is currently achieving. Simple. Google now has your “new” target to work towards, and the same CPA / ROAS you were achieving before. Same results being achieved, no lost leads or revenue.
What about if you want to scale?
If your campaign is in the danger zone (beating target but limited by budget), you need to ask yourself why you set that target in the first place.
If you’re comfortable with leads or revenue at that cost or ROAS level, why are you stifling your growth?
The best option could be to increase your budget, so your campaign isn’t limited. Google’s recent bidding strategies change will help you with this. Increase your budgets and generate leads and revenue at the same level you were happy with when you set your target.
Important questions to consider
Beating your CPA or ROAS target is positive – it looks great in reports. But…
- How many additional leads have you missed out on by limiting your investment?
- How many second, third, or fourth orders haven’t been placed because the first order didn’t happen?
- How many connections and opportunities did you miss as you were too focused on maximising the profit of the first?
A low first time CPA doesn’t equal a successful and thriving business. A thriving business is built upon regular and constant enquiries and sales.
Is this change a sign that you actually need to increase your investment? Could be. Speak to the PPC experts at Dark Horse to find out more, and book a forensic audit of your account.
