Turning on Smart Bidding for campaigns that are ready

What it detectsWhich campaigns are ready for Smart Bidding

The recommendation looks at your active search campaigns and finds campaigns still bidding on manual CPC (bid strategy MANUAL_CPC) while getting enough conversions. Specifically: a campaign qualifies once it has 15 or more conversions in the measurement window. Below that threshold there's too little signal for the bid strategy to reliably steer toward your goal, so we leave the campaign alone.

Only enabled search campaigns (advertising_channel_type SEARCH, status ENABLED) count. Campaigns already on a Smart Bidding strategy don't appear in this recommendation, since there's nothing left to switch. Of the campaigns that do qualify, we show at most 10, sorted by conversion volume, so the campaigns with the most data appear at the top.

Why it mattersWhy switching to Smart Bidding pays off

With manual bidding, you set a fixed maximum CPC per keyword or ad group yourself. Smart Bidding sets the bid per auction using signals you can't replicate manually, like device, location, time of day and search query. Once a campaign gets enough conversions, that per-auction control can typically get more out of the same budget than a fixed manual bid.

The reverse is just as true: without enough conversion data, Smart Bidding has too little to go on, and switching too early can actually hurt performance. That's why this recommendation is deliberately conservative. It only appears for a campaign with proven volume, and it internally depends on working conversion tracking. If your account doesn't measure (usable) conversions, AdBuilder skips this part and automatically removes any outstanding instances.

How it worksThe thresholds and the bid strategy we suggest

For each search campaign we pull the bid strategy, conversions, conversion value and cost over a 30-day window ending 3 days back. We deliberately leave out the last 3 days: conversions often come in with a delay, and without that margin recent volume would look artificially low. A campaign is a candidate if the bid strategy is MANUAL_CPC and the number of conversions in that window is at least 15.

Which Smart Bidding strategy we suggest depends on what your account measures. By default that's maximize conversions, with your recently measured CPA as the starting target (target CPA). Only if your account tracks real conversion value/revenue (not a placeholder of around 1 euro per conversion), you've indicated in your account settings that conversion value matters, and the campaign averages at least 2 euros of value per conversion, do we instead suggest maximize conversion value, with your recent ROAS as the starting target (target ROAS).

• Window: 30 days, ending 3 days ago (conversion-lag margin).
• Trigger: bid strategy MANUAL_CPC and 15 or more conversions in the window.
• Scope: enabled search campaigns only, at most 10 shown (most conversions first).
• Default proposal: maximize conversions with your recent CPA as the starting target.
• Value variant: maximize conversion value with your recent ROAS, only with real conversion value, the account value preference on, and at least 2 euros of value per conversion.

What you can doApply or revert the switch

You choose per campaign whether to go along with the switch. AdBuilder updates the selected campaigns via a campaign update in Google Ads and switches the bid strategy to the suggested target. If you haven't chosen a target CPA or target ROAS, we start with your recently measured performance as the starting target. That keeps the migration bounded: Smart Bidding doesn't get free rein to push up every bid and burn through your daily budget at once.

The switch is reversible. Before switching, we read out each campaign's existing eCPC setting and save it, so reverting restores the exact old manual bidding setup. After the switch, Google Ads starts a short learning period, and you can adjust the target further later. If that target drifts too far from actual performance over time, the target-calibration recommendation picks that up as a follow-up step.

• Check or uncheck per campaign which ones you want to switch.
• Default is maximize conversions with target CPA, or maximize conversion value with target ROAS when your account measures value.
• Set your own target CPA or target ROAS; otherwise we use your recent performance as a starting point.
• Revert to manual bidding, including the previous eCPC flag.