Google Ads · change from 17 August 2026

Smart Bidding changes on 17 August. Target CPA and Target ROAS campaigns can burn your money!

Today a budget-limited campaign often delivers far better than your target: you set a €32 CPA and actually pay €19. After 17 August Google stops handing you that gap and steers performance back to the number in your settings. If your targets have not been touched in years, or were set with a safety margin, you will pay considerably more for the same result.

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What changes

Google stops holding your campaigns below target

This is not about ad quality or the auction. It is about how Smart Bidding treats campaigns that hit their daily budget. In most accounts, that is most of them.

Today

The target is a ceiling, not a commitment

When a campaign is budget-limited, the system buys the cheapest conversions it can fit inside the budget. The result often lands well below your target. That gap is currently your bonus.

From 17 Aug 2026

The target is the value being aimed at

Google will consistently steer performance toward the number in your settings, including when you change budgets. A campaign delivering below target today will gradually move back up to it.

Consequence

A price increase nobody announces in the UI

Budgets stay the same, the cost per conversion inside them goes up. Same spend, fewer conversions, and in the report it looks like a performance drop rather than a system change.

Worked example

What an untouched target does to your result

A campaign with a €6,000 monthly budget. The numbers are illustrative, but I see target-to-actual gaps of this size in accounts all the time.

Cost per conversion over time

Conversions per month on an unchanged budget

Today312

After 17 Aug187

−40 %

125 conversions a month gone, without you changing a thing.

TodayAfter 17 Aug

Target CPA in settings€32€32

Actual CPA€19≈ €32

Monthly budget€6,000€6,000

Conversions per month312≈ 187

Same money, 40 % fewer conversions. Target ROAS mirrors it: a campaign holding 520 % against a 350 % target will pull back to 350 %.

Who this affects

Five minutes tells you whether you are in it too

Campaign types

Search
Shopping
Performance Max
Demand Gen
Travel
Google Ads and Search Ads 360

Bid strategies

Target CPA
Target ROAS
Target CPC in Demand Gen
Maximise conversions or value with a target set

The deciding condition

The campaign was flagged Limited by budget at least once in the past 12 months
Actual CPA or ROAS has been consistently better than the target in settings
You have not touched the targets since launching the campaign

Not affected

Manual CPC and Maximise clicks
Target impression share
App campaigns
Video campaigns (reach and views)
Display and Hotel, which already work this way

Google emailed affected accounts on 2 July and rolled out a bid target adjustment tool in the interface from 6 July. Getting no notice does not mean you are safe: notifications only went to a subset of accounts.

If nothing is done

Four things that will happen on their own

More expensive conversions on the same budget

This is not a few percent. The target-to-actual gap is typically 30 to 70 %, and that is exactly how much your cost per conversion goes up.

A drop that gets blamed on seasonality

The change lands mid-August. Without the context it looks like a weak month rather than a system change, so it gets addressed late, in September or October.

Panic slashing of targets

The most common reaction is to cut targets in half all at once. That triggers a fresh learning phase and performance drops even further. Targets need to move in steps, with time in between.

Broken year-on-year comparisons

Data before and after 17 August is no longer comparable. Without an annotation and recalculated benchmarks you will be comparing apples to oranges for the rest of the year.

The fix

A review of your setup and a reset of targets for the new logic

I go through your account, find the campaigns the change applies to, and decide for each one whether the target moves, the budget moves, or nothing does. You get the setup done and a plan for what to watch in the first two weeks after the change.

Inventory of affected campaigns

I list every Target CPA, Target ROAS and Demand Gen Target CPC campaign that was budget-limited in the past 12 months. That list is what everything else works from.

Target versus actual

For each campaign I compare the target in settings with actual performance over 30 and 90 days, ranked by the size of the gap. The size of the gap is the size of the risk.

A decision per campaign

I separate gaps that are a deliberate buffer for growth from numbers nobody has touched in years. Then it is one of three calls: reset the target, add budget, or leave it alone.

Resetting in steps

Targets move gradually so they do not trigger an unnecessary learning phase. Never more than one change inside a single conversion cycle.

Checking the measurement underneath

Targeting is only as good as the data it stands on. I check conversions, their values, duplicates and attribution. A badly measured conversion does more damage after 17 August than it did before.

Report and monitoring plan

You get an overview of every change with the reasoning behind it, plus the specific numbers to watch in the first two weeks, including the thresholds for stepping in.

What you get

A list of affected campaigns
Targets reset directly in the account
A report with the reasoning behind each change
A 14-day monitoring plan

Get my setup reviewed

Who does the work

František Stejskal, PPC specialist since 2019

For the past 6 years I've helped companies grow through performance marketing. I've managed campaigns with a combined budget of over €8 million and led projects for 70+ clients. From e-commerce to enterprise.

I do the review personally. It's not handed off to a junior or a template. For every campaign you get a note on why I moved the target, or why I left it alone.

FAQ

What people ask most

It's already past 17 August. Is this still worth it?

Yes. The change does not hit every campaign at once, and it certainly does not go away: a badly set target costs you money every additional day. After the date I also work with real data, so I can see exactly how far performance has moved instead of estimating it.

I'm not budget-limited. Does this affect me?

What matters is whether the campaign was budget-limited at any point in the past 12 months, even briefly. More accounts meet that condition than people assume. The review settles it.

Can't I reset the targets myself?

You can, and Google has offered its own tool with recommendations since 6 July. The risk is taking those recommendations wholesale and all at once, which triggers a learning phase across the entire account. Most of the work is deciding where the gap is intentional and where it's a mistake. The tool doesn't know that.

Do you need access to my account?

Read-only access is enough for the analysis, standard access is needed to make the changes. You can revoke access at any point after delivery.

An agency runs my campaigns. Does this make sense?

It does, often more so. It's an independent look at how the targets are set, and the agency then gets a concrete brief instead of a vague do something about it.

How long does it take?

Delivered within five business days of handing over access. For accounts with dozens of campaigns I'll tell you upfront if more time is needed.

What if it turns out everything is fine?

Then that's what the report says and I change nothing. A paid review that finds nothing is still cheaper than conversions getting tens of percent more expensive.

Order

Check your setup while it's still just a few numbers

Fill in the form and I'll get back to you within 24 hours with instructions for handing over access.

€240excl. VAT

One-off · delivered in 5 business days