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Google Ads Bid Strategies in 2026: Which One to Use, and When

By Gordon Hwa, Founder, Khepri Digital
Updated · First published 8 December 2023 · 14 min read

What is a Google Ads bid strategy?

It's the rule Google Ads follows when it decides how much to bid for your ad each time someone searches. A manual bid strategy lets you set the maximum cost per click (CPC) yourself. An automated bidding strategy sets bids for you, towards a goal you choose.

Most automated bid strategies in Google Ads are Smart Bidding, which Google defines as "bidding strategies that use Google AI to optimize for conversions or conversion value in every auction, a feature known as 'auction-time bidding'". The point of auction-time bidding is that the bid can change for each search, depending on the device, location, time, audience and the search itself, which no person adjusting bids by hand can match.

That's also its weakness. Smart Bidding can only aim at what you tell it is a conversion. If your tracking counts form views, or counts one enquiry twice, it gets very good at buying the wrong thing.

Which Google Ads bidding strategies are there in 2026?

Google Ads bidding strategies come in two groups: manual bidding, where you set the bids, and automated bidding strategies, where Google Ads sets them towards your goal. All but Manual CPC are automated.

Bid strategy What it does Use it when What it needs
Maximize conversions Gets as many conversions as possible within your budget Every lead or sale is worth about the same, and you want volume Reliable conversion tracking
Target CPA (target cost per action) Gets as many conversions as possible at the average cost per action (CPA) you set You know what a lead can cost and still be profitable Conversion tracking; no minimum history
Maximize conversion value Gets the most total conversion value from your budget Sales or bookings differ in value Conversion values passed to Google Ads
Target ROAS (target return on ad spend) Maximises conversion value at the return on ad spend (ROAS) you set You know the ROAS you need, and values are tracked 15+ conversions with value in 30 days (Search, Shopping)
Maximize clicks Gets as many clicks as possible within your budget New accounts, or traffic is genuinely the goal Nothing; it doesn't optimise for sales
Target impression share Bids to show your ad at the top, the absolute top, or anywhere on the page Brand protection, or a share-of-search goal A clear reason to pay for visibility
Manual CPC You set the most you're willing to pay for a click, per keyword or ad group Very low volume, tracking not ready, or tight testing Time, and someone checking it weekly

Video campaigns have their own options, such as cost per view (CPV), and Display can be bought on a pay-per-conversion basis; neither is covered here.

One change to know: from June 2026, Google shows Target CPA and Target ROAS as standalone bid strategy options instead of settings inside Maximize conversions and Maximize conversion value. Google calls it "purely a visual change to the labels that won't change how your bid strategies work".

What happened to Enhanced CPC?

Enhanced cost per click (ECPC) was a halfway house: you set manual bids and Google Ads raised or lowered them for clicks that looked likely to convert. Google retired it. In its own words: "Effective the week of March 31, 2025 Enhanced CPC (ECPC) is no longer available for Search and Display campaigns. Campaigns that were not proactively migrated to another bid strategy prior to deprecation are now effectively using Manual CPC."

If you inherited your Google Ads account from a setup before 2025, check every Search and Display campaign. Anything that was on ECPC is now on Manual CPC, often with bids nobody has touched since. Google's suggested replacements are Maximize conversions or Target CPA for lead volume, Maximize conversion value or Target ROAS once you track at least two different conversion values, and Maximize clicks or impression-based bidding where traffic or visibility is the goal.

Some older guides, including a few of Google's own help pages, still list ECPC as an option. For Search and Display, it isn't one.

How do you choose the right bid strategy?

Start from what you can measure reliably, not from the strategy you'd like to use.

Is conversion tracking reliable?(real leads or sales, each counted once) NoYes Fix tracking firstMeanwhile: Maximize clicksor Manual CPC What's the goal?sales and leads, or visibility VisibilityTarget impressionshare Are conversions worth differentamounts, with values tracked? No, about the sameYes Maximize conversionsthen Target CPA, once you knowwhat a lead can cost Maximize conversion valuethen Target ROAS, at 15+ valuedconversions in 30 days
How we choose a starting bid strategy. Thresholds from Google Ads Help; the order is ours.

If you're running lead generation (a clinic, a care home, a B2B service), most leads are worth roughly the same until sales qualifies them. Start on Maximize conversions bidding so Google Ads can find the volume, and move to Target CPA when you know the cost per lead you can afford. Google says you can start Target CPA "with no conversion history", but a target set from real data is easier to hold.

If you're selling products or bookings of different values (an online store, a hotel), pass the value of each sale to Google Ads and bid on value. A S$40 order and a S$400 order are not the same conversion, and value-based bidding is what tells Google Ads that. Start on Maximize conversion value, then set a Target ROAS once you have at least 15 valued conversions in 30 days.

If you want to protect your brand name, Target impression share bidding on a brand campaign keeps your ad at the top when people search for you. Watch the cost per click: it's easy to overpay for clicks you would have had anyway.

How long does Smart Bidding take to learn?

Less time than most people think, but longer than most people wait. Google's rules:

  • The "Learning" status lasts up to 7 days. Google says it "never lasts more than 7 days", and your ads keep running normally during it.
  • What triggers it: a new or reactivated bid strategy, adding or removing campaigns, ad groups or keywords from it, or a significant change to the conversion goals.
  • What doesn't: changing budgets, targets, ads or targeting "never remove your historical data or trigger 'Learning' status".
  • When to judge it: performance "typically converges to your new goal within 1 to 2 conversion cycles". Google recommends evaluating "over 2 conversion cycles or a 2 week window (whichever is longer)", over a period with "at least 30 conversions, such as a month or longer (50 conversions for Target ROAS)".
  • It never starts from zero if the account has conversion history.

A conversion cycle is the time between the click and the conversion. For a S$30 online order it might be a day. For a nursing home admission it can be weeks, which is why care and healthcare accounts need more patience than retail.

What changed in Google Ads bidding in 2026?

Four changes worth knowing:

  1. Target CPA and Target ROAS became standalone options in June 2026, a labelling change only.
  2. Targets are followed more closely. Since 17 August 2026, campaigns that are limited by budget deliver closer to the target you set, even if they used to beat it. Google's example: a campaign with a S$10 Target CPA that was achieving S$5 now delivers nearer S$10. If you set loose targets as a safety margin, tighten them.
  3. AI Max for Search depends on Smart Bidding. Google says search term matching, final URL expansion and text customisation "require conversion-based Smart Bidding strategies in order to function effectively", and that with Manual CPC "the Search Term Matching feature in AI Max will not work". Dynamic Search Ads will be upgraded to AI Max from February 2027.
  4. Smart Bidding Exploration lets Target ROAS campaigns bid more loosely, within a tolerance of 5% to 30%, to find searches they'd otherwise skip. Google reports that Search campaigns using it "on average see 27% more unique converting users".

Treat Google's performance figures as what they are: Google's own averages. Its reported 7% to 14% uplift from AI Max, for example, comes from "Google internal data". Test before you believe it in your account.

What is value-based bidding, and when is it worth it?

Value-based bidding is Smart Bidding towards conversion value rather than conversion count: Maximize conversion value or Target ROAS. Google describes it as optimising "based on the value brought to their business", as opposed to conversion-based bidding, which "aims to maximize conversion volume".

It's worth it whenever conversions differ in value and you can pass that value back. That's where we've seen the biggest change. Until February 2026, The Legian Seminyak's Google Ads account didn't track booking value by campaign, so nobody could see which ads paid for themselves. Once booking value was tracked back to each campaign and budget followed it, the account returned 11.8× its spend in booking value from May to July 2026, across 48 bookings (the case study).

Google Ads can also bid differently for new customers. Its new customer acquisition goal lets you bid higher for new customers than existing ones, or only for new customers, with Target ROAS or Maximize conversion value. Google recommends the new-customers-only mode only "if you have strict budgets for customer acquisition, or have non-purchase conversion goals like lead generation".

What about portfolio strategies, seasonality and data exclusions?

  • Portfolio bid strategies share one bid strategy across several campaigns, ad groups or keywords, so they learn from pooled data. Useful when single campaigns are too small to learn alone. They aren't available for Performance Max.
  • Seasonality adjustments tell Smart Bidding to expect a short change in conversion rates, such as a sale. Google says they suit "short events of 1–7 days", and may not work well beyond 14 days.
  • Data exclusions tell Smart Bidding to ignore days when conversion tracking broke, so a tracking outage doesn't teach it the wrong lesson.

What does it cost, and how do you know if your bids are right?

There is no reliable public benchmark for Google Ads costs in Singapore; the numbers that circulate on agency blogs give no method. For a global reference, LocaliQ's 2026 benchmarks, drawn from thousands of its customers' Google and Microsoft Ads campaigns, put the average cost per click on search at US$5.42, the average click-through rate at 6.64% and the average conversion rate at 8.18%. Your own account is the only benchmark that matters.

The useful question isn't "is my CPC high?" but "is my cost per qualified lead, or my return on ad spend, where the business needs it?" For Red Crowns Senior Living, cost per lead fell from S$20.25 in Q1 2021 to S$4.31 in Q4 2022 once every enquiry route (two forms, calls, SMS and WhatsApp) was tracked and the account bid on searches like "nursing home admission" rather than "nursing home cost" (the case study). Better tracking and better searches did more than any change of bid strategy.

When does Manual CPC bidding still make sense?

With Manual CPC bidding you set a manual cost per click for each keyword and adjust it yourself. Rarely the right choice in 2026, but not never:

  • An account with only a handful of conversions a month, where automated bidding has too little to learn from.
  • While conversion tracking is being fixed, so automated bidding isn't trained on bad data.
  • Tightly controlled tests where you need to hold bids fixed.

Two costs to weigh: you lose auction-time bidding, and with AI Max you lose search term matching entirely. Most accounts should move to automated bidding as soon as tracking is trustworthy.

How we set up bidding for a new account

  1. Audit conversion tracking: one primary conversion per goal, counted once, with a value where it differs. Offline imports where leads close later.
  2. Pick the strategy from the tree above, starting without a target unless there's solid history.
  3. Leave it for two conversion cycles or two weeks, then set a target from what it actually achieved, not from a wish.
  4. Change one thing at a time, and write down what changed and when.
  5. Review search terms and negative keywords weekly: bidding decides how much, the search terms and negatives decide on what.

That's how we run Google Ads for clients across Singapore and Southeast Asia, as part of our Performance Advertising service. For what PPC management covers beyond bidding, see our guide to PPC management.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best bid strategy in Google Ads?

There isn't one best Google Ads bid strategy. With reliable conversion tracking, use Maximize conversions or Target CPA when leads are worth about the same, and Maximize conversion value or Target ROAS when sales differ in value. Without reliable tracking, fix tracking first.

Is Enhanced CPC still available?

Not for Search and Display. Google retired Enhanced CPC the week of 31 March 2025, and campaigns still on it now run on Manual CPC.

How long is the Smart Bidding learning period?

The "Learning" status lasts at most 7 days. Google recommends judging results over two conversion cycles or two weeks, whichever is longer, with at least 30 conversions (50 for Target ROAS).

How many conversions do you need for Target ROAS?

At least 15 conversions with a value in the past 30 days for Search and Shopping campaigns.

Should I use Target CPA or Maximize conversions?

Start with Maximize conversions to find volume, then add a Target CPA once you know what a lead can cost. Google allows Target CPA with no history, but a target based on real data is easier to hit.

Does changing the budget reset Smart Bidding?

No. Google says budget, target, creative and targeting changes don't remove historical data or trigger the learning status. Adding or removing campaigns from the strategy, or changing conversion goals, does.

Sources

Rewritten in October 2026. The first version of this article was published in December 2023.

This guide supports our Google Ads & SEM service.

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