Google has announced a significant change to how target-based bid strategies behave. From August 17, 2026, campaigns limited by budget that use Target CPA or Target ROAS will be enforced more tightly against the targets you’ve set, including when you make budget adjustments.
The mechanism matters. Right now, a budget-constrained campaign with a £10 Target CPA might actually be delivering at £5. The algorithm has been finding efficiency beyond the target because budget was the limiting factor, not the bidding ceiling. From August 17, that dynamic changes. The system will optimise toward the number you entered. If you entered £10 and you've been getting £5, you’ll get something closer to £10.
Google is not adjusting targets automatically. It will not move your numbers for you. It will simply enforce the ones you already have, more strictly than it has been.
If your campaigns are performing significantly better than their stated CPA or ROAS targets and you take no action before August 17, you will almost certainly see performance deterioration after that date. This is not a minor system update. It is a direct change to bidding behaviour across your most important campaign types.
The Key Dates
Now — July 5, 2026
Review your budget-constrained campaigns. Identify any running Target CPA or Target ROAS where actual performance is materially better than the stated target. This is the window to audit before Google’s tool is available.
July 6, 2026
Bid Target Adjustment Tool goes live in Google Ads. Receive an in-account notification. Review historical campaign performance and apply updated targets directly from the tool. Use it. It carries 42 days of performance context and applies changes with one click.
August 17, 2026
New bidding behaviour takes effect. Campaigns limited by budget will optimise closely to their stated targets. Campaigns that were previously over-performing their targets will trend toward those targets, regardless of whether you’ve reviewed them.
Which Campaigns Are Affected
- Search — Yes
- Shopping — Yes
- Performance Max — Yes
- Demand Gen — Yes
- Display — Already updated
- Travel — Yes
- App campaigns — Not affected
- Video reach campaigns — Not affected
- Video view campaigns (VVC) — Not affected
The campaigns most likely to be affected are the ones running longest on stale targets. Accounts where Target CPA or Target ROAS was set at launch and never revisited against actual performance. If your campaigns have been running for six months or more on targets set at the start, that's where to look first.
Why This Matters More Than It Looks
The scenario Google illustrates in its own documentation is straightforward: a campaign with a £10 Target CPA delivering at £5 will shift toward £10 after August 17 if no action is taken.
That’s a doubling of effective acquisition cost on a campaign that looked healthy in reporting.
What happens if you do nothing?
- Current Target CPA: £10 (set at campaign launch, never updated)
- Actual CPA (recent): £5 — campaign has been over-delivering on efficiency
- Before August 17: Campaign delivers at £5 — budget is the constraint, not the target
- After August 17: Campaign optimises toward £10 — the target you entered is now enforced
- Effect on reporting: CPA doubles. Volume may increase as efficiency loosens. Revenue may hold. The account looks different — and worse — depending on which metric you’re watching.
For PMax specifically, Google’s documentation flags an additional dimension: multi-channel campaigns may see shifts in how traffic is distributed across surfaces. A PMax campaign with a stale Target ROAS running across Search, Shopping, YouTube, and Display may redistribute spend across those channels as the system rebalances toward the enforced target. The aggregate ROAS may hold, but the channel mix changes, and with it, the quality and incrementality of the traffic.
This is the moment to find out whether the targets on your highest-spend campaigns reflect what your business actually needs or the number someone entered at launch and forgot about. The two are often very different things.
Your Four Options Before August 17
1. Do nothing
If your current targets accurately reflect your business goals, no change is required. But if your campaigns are significantly over-performing their targets, doing nothing means accepting the performance shift when August 17 arrives.
Risk: High — if targets are stale
2. Update targets to match actual performance
Use the Bid Target Adjustment Tool (live July 6) to lower your CPA target or raise your ROAS target to reflect what the campaign has actually been delivering. Maintains current efficiency. Locks in the performance you've been getting.
Risk: Low — recommended approach for most accounts
3. Set a custom target based on business goals
If actual performance and business margin requirements differ from the current target, set a target that reflects what's actually profitable. This is the correct approach if your stated target was wrong from the start.
Risk: Low — most commercially defensible
4. Switch to Maximise Conversions or Maximise Conversion Value
Removes the fixed target constraint and optimises for volume within budget. CPA and ROAS will fluctuate with budget changes. Appropriate if volume matters more than efficiency target consistency.
Risk: Medium — efficiency can be unpredictable at budget changes
The Targets You Should Check First
Not every campaign in your account is at risk. The update only applies to campaigns that are limited by budget and using a target-based bid strategy. A campaign spending its full budget comfortably isn't constrained, and therefore isn’t affected in the same way.
The accounts most exposed are those where:
- Target CPA or Target ROAS was set at campaign launch and hasn't been reviewed against actual performance in the last six months or more
- Campaigns are consistently showing "Limited by budget" status
- Actual CPA is materially below the Target CPA — or actual ROAS is materially above the Target ROAS
- PMax campaigns are running multi-channel with a single blended target that hasn't been updated since the campaign was built
- Pull your budget-constrained campaigns now. Compare the stated target against actual 30-day performance. Any campaign where actual performance is 20% or more better than the stated target is worth reviewing before August 17.
The Upside of Getting This Right
There’s a legitimate opportunity buried in this update that’s worth naming alongside the risk.
Google’s documentation states that after August 17, budget increases on campaigns with properly calibrated targets will scale predictably at those targets. Previously, increasing budget on an over-performing, budget-constrained campaign often caused performance to deteriorate. The algorithm was already pushing beyond its stated parameters and additional budget created instability.
Once targets are corrected and the new behaviour is in place, scaling should be more predictable. A campaign delivering at a £5 CPA with a £5 target and room to grow will expand at £5, not unpredictably, as budget increases trigger a rebalancing act between the stated target and actual delivery.
That’s a meaningful improvement for any account where budget scaling has felt unreliable. It requires the targets to be honest first.
Google will notify advertisers with affected campaigns via in-account alerts. Those notifications are triggered for any account with budget-constrained campaigns using target-based strategies in the last 12 months. Don’t wait for the notification. The review should happen now, not when the tool arrives in July.
360 OM View
This update is Google enforcing the rules it said it was already following. The practical impact falls hardest on accounts where targets were set once and never maintained, which describes a lot of accounts that look fine on the surface. Audit your budget-constrained campaigns now. Find the gap between stated targets and actual performance. Set targets that reflect what your business needs, not what somebody entered at launch. The Bid Target Adjustment Tool in July makes this straightforward. August 17 makes not doing it expensive.
Need a fresh perspective? Let’s talk.
At 360 OM, we specialise in helping businesses take their marketing efforts to the next level. Our team stays on top of industry trends, uses data-informed decisions to maximise your ROI, and provides full transparency through comprehensive reports.
.png)
