Google Ads Smart Bidding Going Into 2027- Surfside PPC Podcast Episode 33
Google Ads smart bidding changed on August 17, 2026, and it changed how I bid. Google used to try to beat the target you set. Now it tries to hit it. A $10 target CPA that used to come in at $5 will land closer to $10. This episode covers all four smart bidding strategies, how to set them up, and what that update means going into 2027.
The upside is that your target now works as a constraint. You are telling Google not to spend unless it can hit your number, and to maximize spend inside it.
You cannot talk about smart bidding without conversion tracking, so that comes first. I pull up my own account and show conversion actions that stopped firing months ago, which is the kind of thing that quietly wrecks a bid strategy. If every conversion is not worth the same, set values on them. For me a 60 second call from an ad is worth $200, a lead form I close 30 percent of the time is $100, and mobile click to call sits at $25 to $50.
For a new campaign, start with maximize conversions and let it run for a few weeks. Once you have real data, switch to Target CPA using the number you actually hit. If you ran $200 a day and came in at $125 per conversion, set $125 as your target, then raise the budget. That sounds backwards, but with a target in place you can scale budget as long as you are happy paying that price. For efficiency instead, keep the budget high and walk the target down. I have gone $40 to $37 to $33 to $29, watched volume drop, and settled back at $33.
Maximize conversion value and Target ROAS are the other side, and only work if you are actually valuing conversions. Google comes close to realistic targets, but set 1500 percent and you will not spend your budget, because Google only spends when it is confident it can hit the number. I use the last 30 days to pick a target, same as Google.
I also cover portfolio bid strategies, which apply one strategy across multiple search and shopping campaigns, not Performance Max. The maximum bid limit matters there, and my rule of thumb is about half your target CPA.
The questions to ask: is every conversion worth the same? Are you tracking real sales and leads, not button clicks? Would you pay for every primary conversion in your account? Set your target, then leave it alone.
If you need help with Google Ads, reach out to Surfside PPC.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT WE GO OVER IN THIS EPISODE: ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
- The four smart bidding strategies and when each fits
- The August 17 update and why Google now hits targets instead of beating them
- Setting a dollar value on each conversion action
- Switching to Target CPA using the number you actually hit
- Raising budget after you set a target, and walking it down
- Why unrealistic ROAS targets stop your spend
- Portfolio bid strategies and the maximum bid limit
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ RELEVANT URLS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ▸ Google Ads Bidding Strategies Explained → https://surfsideppc.com/blogs/google-ads/google-ads-bidding-strategies-explained
▸ Google Ads Conversion Tracking for Local Sites → https://surfsideppc.com/blogs/google-ads/google-ads-conversion-tracking-local-websites
▸ Google Ads KPIs: The Metrics That Matter → https://surfsideppc.com/blogs/google-ads/google-ads-kpis-guide
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ TIMESTAMPS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
0:00 Google Ads Smart Bidding 0:27 The August 17 Bidding Update 1:10 Using Your Target As a Constraint 1:47 How Smart Bidding Replaced Manual Bids 2:39 Why Conversion Tracking Comes First 3:53 Picking Your Primary Lead Conversions 4:36 Setting Values For Each Conversion Action 5:37 Performance Max Forces Smart Bidding 6:40 Start With Maximize Conversions 7:17 When To Use Maximize Conversion Value 8:40 Switching To Target CPA From Your Real Data 9:38 Raising Budget After You Set a Target CPA 10:34 Walking Your Target CPA Down 11:09 Target ROAS and Realistic Targets 12:58 Spending a Full Budget With Target ROAS 13:45 A Lead Generation Starting Point 15:51 Portfolio Bid Strategies and Max Bid Limit 17:06 Matching the Strategy To Your Goal 18:26 What Changed in 2026
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT SURFSIDE PPC ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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