Google Is Ending Target Overperformance – What to Fix Before August 17 via @sejournal, @brookeosmundson

Google’s upcoming Smart Bidding change has sparked plenty of discussion across the PPC industry, but its impact may be more limited than some of the online reaction suggests.

Beginning August 17, budget-limited campaigns using Target CPA or Target ROAS will optimize more closely toward their stated bidding target. Google also introduced a Bid Target Adjustment Tool on July 6, giving advertisers time to review affected campaigns before the change takes effect.

The update applies only to budget-limited campaigns using target-based bidding strategies across Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Travel, Search Ads 360, and Demand Gen campaigns in Display & Video 360.

Campaigns that aren’t limited by budget won’t behave differently, and App, Video Reach, and Video View campaigns are excluded. Hotel and Display campaigns already optimize this way.

The discussion around the update has largely focused on advertisers who have benefited from campaigns consistently outperforming their stated Target CPA or Target ROAS. For some accounts, that gap wasn’t an accident. It was an intentional way to maintain efficient performance inside a fixed budget.

To understand which campaigns deserve attention before August 17, it’s worth starting with why Google made the change in the first place.

Google Is Trying to Solve a Real Problem

Google’s reasoning starts with a legitimate problem.

Before this update, increasing the daily budget on a budget-limited campaign using Target CPA or Target ROAS could produce inconsistent results. Some campaigns maintained similar efficiency, while others experienced noticeable fluctuations as Smart Bidding adjusted to the additional budget.

That made it more difficult to predict how performance would change after increasing budget.

Beginning August 17, Google wants budget-limited campaigns to optimize toward the target advertisers entered, regardless of whether additional budget becomes available. A campaign with a $10 Target CPA should continue optimizing toward that $10 target instead of shifting behavior because its budget changed.

Google illustrates the change with a simple example in its documentation:

If your campaign’s Target CPA is $10, but your recent actual CPA performance is $5, your campaign will deliver more closely to a $10 actual CPA starting August 17, 2026. Update your target to $5 to maintain your recent performance or to a target CPA of your choosing based on your business goals.

That recommendation is the foundation for the entire update. Google isn’t changing advertisers’ targets automatically. It’s expecting advertisers to update those targets if recent performance better reflects the outcome they want to maintain.

Why the Industry Reacted So Strongly

Google’s documentation explains what changes on August 17. The discussion among PPC practitioners centered on something different: many advertisers had built successful account strategies around the existing behavior.

Joey Bidner captured that perspective in one of the strongest reactions to the announcement. He wrote that several of his best-performing accounts “INTENTIONALLY run with low tROAS or high tCPA targets,” arguing that the additional flexibility allowed Smart Bidding to continue finding efficient traffic. From his perspective, the update changes an approach that many advertisers had deliberately adopted rather than accidentally benefited from.

Nils Rooijmans focused less on Google’s motivation and more on the practical outcome. He warned that advertisers with campaigns consistently outperforming their targets could see “decreasing efficiency of spend” after August 17 if they leave those targets unchanged. His recommendation was to compare recent actual CPA or ROAS against the bidding target, then decide whether the current target still reflects the business objective. He also noted that bid strategy targets and business targets are not always the same number.

Kirk Williams acknowledged that Google’s new approach may be how budget-limited bidding was originally intended to work. At the same time, he pointed out that agencies and advertisers have spent years learning how Smart Bidding behaved in the real world. Rather than recommending broad account changes, his team is auditing each campaign individually by looking at the gap between assigned targets and actual performance before deciding whether any adjustments are necessary.

Jyll Saskin Gales reached a different conclusion. In her podcast, she argued that Target CPA and Target ROAS should do exactly what their names imply. If advertisers want a $5 CPA, they should tell Google they want a $5 CPA.

If your target is $10 and it’s been achieving $5, then change your target to $5. What’s the big issue here?

Reading through these reactions, I don’t think the disagreement is really about Google’s documentation.

The disagreement is centered around what a bidding target actually represents.

Google treats Target CPA and Target ROAS as the performance advertisers want Smart Bidding to achieve.

Many advertisers have used those same targets as one of several controls that influence how a budget-limited campaign behaves over time. If a campaign consistently delivered leads below its Target CPA or exceeded its Target ROAS, and the business was happy with the results, there was often little reason to revisit the setting.

Those are two different ways of using the same bidding strategy.

That’s why this update generated so much discussion, and it sets up the larger question behind August 17: should a Target CPA or Target ROAS always represent the exact performance advertisers want to achieve, or can it also function as a control inside a budget-limited campaign?

The Target Was Never Just a Goal

Google’s documentation treats Target CPA and Target ROAS as direct instructions. If the target is $50, Smart Bidding should optimize toward a $50 CPA. If the target is 500%, Smart Bidding should pursue a 500% return.

That seems like a logical way to design the product. But, many advertisers ended up using those targets a little differently.

Imagine a Search campaign with a $50 Target CPA that has consistently generated leads at $35 for the past year. The campaign spends its full budget every month, lead quality is strong, and the business has no interest in increasing spend.

Most PPC managers wouldn’t look at that account and immediately think the bidding target needs to change. They’d probably think the campaign is performing exactly as they want it to.

That’s how many advertisers arrived at the current debate.

The Target CPA remained at $50 because it wasn’t creating a problem. The campaign continued delivering leads at $35, businesses were satisfied with the results, and there was little reason to revisit a setting that appeared to be working.

Over time, the bidding target became more than a performance objective. It also became one of several controls shaping how a budget-limited campaign behaved.

Google’s August update moves those two ideas back together. The target advertisers enter is expected to represent the performance they want Smart Bidding to achieve.

For advertisers whose targets already reflect that objective, very little changes.

For advertisers who intentionally left those targets above or below recent performance because the campaigns were producing the right business outcome, August 17 creates a decision that previously didn’t exist.

That’s ultimately why this update matters to the industry: Advertisers now have to decide whether the number inside the bidding strategy still represents the outcome they want to preserve.

In a recent AMA about the August 17 deadline by Ginny Marvin, Google Ads liaison, PPCers still have outstanding questions about secondary effects of the bidding update.

Xavier Mantica asked a valid question about what happens to CPCs:

So if my campaign is overachieving its target, how exactly is the algorithm going to match my target CPA or ROAS? Will it just increase CPCs until it inflates my CPA/ROAS , or will it intentionally waste money on bad search terms? These are important questions!

It will be interesting to understand what advertisers are seeing in other metrics beyond tCPA and tROAS after this update.

Audit Your Campaigns Before August 17

If you manage multiple Google Ads accounts, you don’t need to start by looking at every campaign. You can narrow your list based on campaigns that use a current Target CPA or Target ROAS strategy.

Google’s documentation is clear that this update affects budget-limited campaigns using Target CPA or Target ROAS. That immediately removes a large percentage of campaigns from the review.

Once you’ve identified the campaigns that fall into that group, I’d work through four questions.

1. Is The Campaign Consistently Limited by Budget?

This update is about campaigns that spend as much as they’re allowed while using a target-based bidding strategy. If a campaign occasionally shows a “Limited by budget” status for a day or two, that doesn’t necessarily deserve the same attention as one that’s been budget constrained for weeks or months.

2. How Large Is the Gap Between the Assigned Target and Actual Performance?

This is where I’d spend most of my time.

Don’t compare yesterday’s CPA against the target. Look across at least one full conversion cycle, and preferably longer for accounts with seasonal swings or lower conversion volume.

You’re looking for campaigns where actual performance has consistently settled well below the assigned Target CPA or well above the assigned Target ROAS. Those are the campaigns most likely to behave differently after August 17.

3. Does the Current Target Still Reflect the Outcome You Want?

This is probably the most important question in the entire audit.

Sometimes the answer will be yes.

The campaign may have been built around a $50 Target CPA because that’s still the right acquisition cost for the business. In that case, there’s probably nothing to change.

Other campaigns tell a different story. Maybe a $50 Target CPA has quietly produced leads closer to $35 for the past year. If that lower CPA has become the performance the business expects, the target may no longer represent the objective you’re asking Smart Bidding to pursue.

That’s the decision Google is now asking advertisers to make.

4. Is the Bidding Target the Real Issue?

Not every budget-limited campaign needs a tighter Target CPA or higher Target ROAS.

Some campaigns are limited because the budget simply isn’t large enough to capture available demand. Others may benefit from narrowing keyword coverage, refining audience targeting, or reconsidering whether a target-based bidding strategy is the best fit for the campaign in its current state.

Changing the bidding target should be one option in the evaluation, not the automatic answer.

Before August 17, I’d want every affected campaign to pass this simple checklist:

The value of this analysis isn’t making changes for the sake of making changes. It’s knowing that when August 17 arrives, your bidding targets reflect decisions you’ve made intentionally rather than settings that haven’t been revisited in months.

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