Assuming you run Google Ads, you already know that when setting up campaigns, you have to decide how the account bids, and the choice between Target ROAS, Maximize Conversions, and manual bidding is not always clear cut. The right Google Ads bid strategy depends on how much clean conversion data your account has and whether the revenue values behind those conversions are accurate. For a fully optimized account, that usually means Target ROAS.
Use manual or Maximize Conversions while you build conversion history. Move to Maximize Conversion Value or Target ROAS once your values are reliable and you have enough monthly conversions for the algorithm to work with. Google recommends at least 50 conversions in the last 30 days before running Target ROAS. Below that, the strategy does not have enough value data to bid on.
What each Google Ads bid strategy does
Each strategy solves a different problem, so it helps to be clear on what you are asking the algorithm to do.
Maximize Conversions spends your budget to win as many conversions as it can, without regard to what any single conversion is worth. Maximize Conversion Value looks at revenue instead of volume and tries to bring in as much total value as your budget allows. Target ROAS does the same thing but adds a return target you set, so the algorithm holds bids to that level of efficiency. Manual bidding leaves the bids in your hands.
Of course, there are downsides to each and you have to be cautious of them. Maximize Conversions will spend the full budget whether demand is strong or weak, so it can bring in a lot of low value conversions. Target ROAS protects your return target by pulling back on volume, which means it will sit out auctions when the target is set too high. Manual gives you control, but it does not scale, because no person can adjust bids against live auction signals the way the system can.
How to run Target ROAS the right way
For ecommerce, value based bidding is the strongest approach, and Target ROAS is really just Maximize Conversion Value with a return target attached. In Optmyzr’s analysis of more than 14,000 Google Ads accounts, Maximize Conversion Value produced the strongest ROAS of the Smart Bidding strategies, and Target ROAS was one of only two strategies where setting a target improved results instead of hurting them. That is why we run most well set up ecommerce accounts on Target ROAS. It is also the strategy teams get wrong most often, and in most cases the problem is not the algorithm but the account setup feeding it.
Fix your value data before you set a target. Target ROAS optimizes toward whatever conversion values you send it. If those values are wrong, the bidding will be wrong with complete confidence. Set purchases as your single primary conversion action, and move add to cart, page views, and other micro conversions to secondary so they are not counted as revenue. If you pull conversions from GA4, confirm that only one action is marked primary so you are not counting the same sale twice. When the values feeding the system are inflated, the returns it reports and bids toward will be inflated too. (Internal link: “Why your in-platform ROAS is lying to you.”)
A common example makes this concrete. We have taken over accounts reporting a 700 percent return in Google Ads that looked great until we opened the conversion settings and found add to cart set as a primary conversion with a value attached. That matters because the conversion value column is not revenue. It is the sum of values from every action marked primary, and primary actions are also what the algorithm bids toward. Picture 1,000 dollars in spend. Fifty people add carts averaging 120 dollars, so 6,000 dollars hits the value column without a single sale. Ten of them buy at 100 dollars each, adding 1,000 dollars of real revenue, and those buyers get counted twice, once at cart and once at purchase. Google reports 7,000 dollars in conversion value against 1,000 dollars in spend, a 700 percent return. Actual revenue was 1,000 dollars, so the real return was 100 percent. Meanwhile the algorithm was optimizing toward carts rather than sales, sending budget to cheap clicks that filled carts and never checked out. Fixing it is not complicated, and it is the first thing to do before setting any target. Mark one purchase action as primary, remove the values from everything else, and let the reported numbers settle to something accurate. Any target you set before that correction is built on bad data.
Set your first target from history, not ambition. Look at the conversion value per cost the account has actually produced over recent months, and set your opening target at or just below it. If the account has been delivering a 350 percent return, start there rather than at 600 because that is the number leadership wants to see. A target higher than anything the account has achieved will cut volume sharply, because Target ROAS will stop bidding into auctions it cannot win at that return.
Adjust the target to control volume or efficiency. Once the strategy is stable, the target becomes your main lever. Lowering it lets the strategy enter more auctions and pick up volume. Raising it makes the strategy more selective and protects margin. Move in small increments, because a large change sends the campaign back into learning and costs you the read on what is working. Google advises keeping target changes modest for this reason.
How to tell if your Target ROAS is set wrong
There are two clear signs the target is off, and they point in opposite directions.
When the target is too high, volume drops sharply and your search impression share lost to rank goes up, because the strategy is passing on auctions it does not expect to win at the return you set. Spend falls, the return column looks strong, and the account slowly loses sales while the report looks healthy. A target set for appearances tends to do exactly this.
When the target is too low, the opposite happens. Spend climbs, volume looks good, and efficiency drops below what the business can support, which means you are paying for growth that does not hold up financially. In both cases the fix is the same. Move the target back toward what the account has really delivered, in increments of ten to fifteen percent, and give each change about a week before judging it.
Weight your values by margin where you can. The step that separates a good account from a profitable one is treating revenue by its actual contribution rather than its top line. When you assign conversion values based on contribution margin instead of sale price, using custom labels and margin tiers in your feed, Target ROAS bids toward profit rather than gross revenue.
Setting this up takes effort more than cleverness. You group products into margin bands, tag each band with a custom label in the Merchant Center feed, and assign values that reflect contribution margin instead of sale price, usually through a supplemental feed or a feed rule so you are not editing thousands of rows by hand. Higher margin products get weighted up, lower margin products get weighted down, and the strategy stops valuing a fifteen dollar accessory the same as fifteen dollars of a low margin bundle. It is the closest Google Ads gets to letting you bid on profit directly.
How to run Maximize Conversions the right way
Maximize Conversions is not a weaker option. It is the correct tool while you build the conversion data Target ROAS needs.
Use it when you have conversion volume but cannot yet trust your values, or when every conversion is worth roughly the same amount. Its main risk is that it spends the full budget regardless of quality, so your budget setting is the control that matters. Set it at a level you can afford in a slow week, and pay attention to what it actually brings in rather than the raw count. If you start seeing a lot of low value conversions, that is the sign you have outgrown it and need value based bidding.
The sensible progression is to build history on manual or Maximize Conversions, move to Maximize Conversion Value once your values are reliable, and then add Target ROAS when you want a return target on top. Skipping straight to Target ROAS on an account without enough data is a common mistake, because you are asking a value optimizer to do a job it does not have the data for.
When manual CPC bidding still makes sense
Manual bidding is not obsolete. Its role is just narrower than it used to be. It is the right choice when the algorithm would be working from too little information.
Low volume is the main situation. A campaign with only a handful of conversions a month does not give Smart Bidding enough data to model bids, so automation ends up reacting to noise. Small geographies, long tail keyword sets, and new markets where you do not yet know what converts fall into the same category. Manual bidding also helps during a controlled test, when you want to hold bids steady and isolate a single variable. Treat it as a temporary step to gather clean data, then move to automation once you have the volume.
How to switch bid strategies safely
Every strategy change resets learning, and handling that reset poorly is where a lot of accounts lose a month of performance.
When you switch strategies, Google enters a learning period. Google puts the typical length at about a week, though it depends heavily on conversion volume, moving faster on high volume campaigns and taking three weeks or more on low volume ones. During learning, the system tests bids it has not tried before, so results are volatile and do not reflect steady state performance. The costly mistake is making several changes during that window, then cutting budget or moving the target when early numbers look bad, which restarts learning and doubles the disruption. Change one thing at a time, keep target adjustments under about fifteen to twenty percent, and wait until the learning period ends before drawing conclusions.
Running Target ROAS at scale with portfolio bid strategies
The same principles apply on larger accounts, with two additions worth noting.
First, keep your conversion signal consolidated. A smaller number of larger campaigns trains the model faster than many small campaigns that each sit below the volume the algorithm needs, since Smart Bidding learns at the campaign level rather than across the account. Second, use portfolio bid strategies to combine data from several campaigns under a shared Target ROAS. That pooling lets lower volume campaigns benefit from value based bidding instead of underperforming on their own. Combined with margin weighted values, this is how you run Target ROAS across a large account without splitting it into many undertrained campaigns.
A few practical notes on portfolios. You can set a portfolio Target ROAS with optional minimum and maximum bid limits, and it is best to use those limits sparingly, since tight caps can restrict the algorithm during learning. Group campaigns with a similar audience and return profile together rather than combining everything, because pooling campaigns with very different economics pulls the model toward an average that suits none of them. Give a new portfolio the same learning time you would give a single campaign, since the reset applies across the whole group.
Why we default to Target ROAS
For an account that is clean and running consistently, we use Target ROAS as our default, and we build toward it deliberately rather than turning it on early.
A fully optimized account, in the way we run them, has a few things in place at once. Purchases are the single primary conversion, values reflect margin rather than raw revenue, the account has the conversion volume Target ROAS needs, and campaigns are consolidated enough that each one gets enough data to train. With those conditions met, Target ROAS ties bidding directly to the result that matters, which is profitable return rather than conversion count or revenue on its own. Maximize Conversions and manual bidding are the steps we use to get an account to that point, not the end state.
The reason we do not switch Target ROAS on immediately is everything above. The strategy is only as good as the data feeding it, so most of the work is in the setup rather than the setting itself. Done properly, Target ROAS lets the system price every auction against predicted value in real time, which no manual process can match. Done without the groundwork, it optimizes confidently toward the wrong number.
Key Takeaway
The right Google Ads bid strategy is the one your account’s data can support, and for a clean, high volume account that is almost always Target ROAS with margin weighted values. Build history on Maximize Conversions, protect your conversion values as carefully as your budget, move to Target ROAS once you clear roughly 50 monthly conversions, and adjust the target in small steps. If you want help deciding whether your account is ready for Target ROAS or still sending value to the wrong conversions, our ecommerce paid media team can audit it.
FAQ
Which Google Ads bid strategy should I use?
Match the strategy to your conversion data. Use manual or Maximize Conversions to build history, move to Maximize Conversion Value once your values are reliable, and use Target ROAS as your default once you have accurate margin weighted values and enough volume, which for most accounts means at least 50 conversions in the last 30 days.
How do you set a Target ROAS target?
Base the first target on the conversion value per cost your account has actually delivered, and set it at or just below that figure rather than above it. Once the strategy is stable, lower the target in small steps to gain volume or raise it to protect efficiency, keeping each change modest so you do not reset learning.
Does switching bid strategy reset the learning period?
Yes. Switching strategies, or changing your target by more than roughly fifteen to twenty percent, starts a new learning period of about a week or longer depending on conversion volume. Expect volatile results during that time, and avoid further changes until it ends.
Is manual CPC dead in Google Ads?
No, but its role is limited. Manual bidding still fits low volume campaigns, small geographies, new markets, and controlled tests. For accounts with steady conversion volume and accurate values, Target ROAS generally performs better.
What is Smart Bidding in Google Ads?
Smart Bidding is Google’s automated bidding system that sets bids at auction time using machine learning and signals like device, location, and time of day. Target ROAS, Target CPA, Maximize Conversions, and Maximize Conversion Value are all Smart Bidding strategies. Manual CPC is the main strategy that sits outside it.
Maximize Conversions vs Maximize Conversion Value: what is the difference?
Maximize Conversions optimizes for the number of conversions and treats every conversion as equal. Maximize Conversion Value optimizes for total revenue instead, using the conversion values you send it. If a 30 dollar sale and a 300 dollar sale should not count the same, you want value based bidding.
About the Author: Tony Adam
