Budget-limited campaigns will be pulled back toward their Target CPA or ROAS

Here’s the situation many advertisers have been benefiting from without realising it:

You set a Target CPA of $50. But because your campaign is limited by budget, Google has actually been delivering leads at $30 — significantly better than your target. This happens because budget constraints force Google to be more selective about which auctions to enter.

From August 17, Google is closing this gap. Budget-limited campaigns will be pulled back toward their stated targets — meaning if your target is $50, Google will stop delivering at $30 and move toward $50 instead. For many advertisers this means costs going up without any change in budget.

What to do before August 17:

1. Go to your Google Ads account and identify every campaign marked “Limited by budget”
2. For each limited campaign, check your actual CPA or ROAS vs your target — is there a gap?
3. If your actual performance is better than your target, lower your target to match your actual performance before August 17 to lock in the better results
4. Alternatively, increase your budget so the campaign is no longer budget-limited
5. Use the new Bid Target Adjustment Tool (rolling out July 6) to make this process faster

What the Bid Target Adjustment Tool does

This tool is designed specifically to help advertisers prepare for the August 17 bidding change. It shows you:

• Each campaign’s historical actual CPA or ROAS performance
• The gap between your stated target and your actual performance
• Recommended target adjustments based on your history
• A one-click way to apply the updated targets across multiple campaigns

This makes the August 17 preparation significantly faster — instead of manually checking each campaign, you can review and update all targets in one place.

What to do: When you receive the notification in your account, open the tool immediately. Review every campaign flagged and apply the recommended target adjustments before August 17.

Find new profitable demand without losing control of your targets

Smart Bidding Exploration works by allowing you to set a ROAS tolerance — a range within which Google can explore new query categories that your campaigns haven’t been winning before. Rather than only bidding on queries you already know convert, it intelligently tests new territory within your defined risk tolerance.

The results so far are significant:

• Campaigns using Smart Bidding Exploration see an 18% lift in unique converting query categories
• Average of 19% more conversions compared to campaigns not using it
• Already live in all Performance Max campaigns without product feeds globally
• Beta rolling out to Shopping and feed-based Performance Max campaigns

What to do: If you run Performance Max campaigns, check if Smart Bidding Exploration is available in your account. Enable it with a conservative ROAS tolerance first — test for 30 days, then adjust based on the quality of new conversions coming in.

Temporarily boost performance during sales, launches, and peak periods

Google has launched Promotion Mode — a new feature that lets you temporarily loosen your ROAS tolerance and increase budget for a defined period, then automatically return to normal settings afterwards. It’s currently in beta for Search and Performance Max campaigns.

This is particularly useful for:

• Product launches or service promotions
• Seasonal peaks — Black Friday, Christmas, end of financial year
• Limited-time offers where you want to maximise reach for a short window
• Flash sales or time-sensitive campaigns

What to do: If you run seasonal promotions, add Promotion Mode to your toolkit. Set it up before your next peak period rather than scrambling to adjust settings manually in the middle of a promotion.

First click, linear, time decay, and position-based attribution are being removed

Starting mid-July 2026, Google is removing the ability to select these four attribution models for conversions in Google Ads:

• First click — credits the first ad click in the journey
• Linear — splits credit equally across all touchpoints
• Time decay — gives more credit to clicks closer to the conversion
• Position-based — gives 40% credit each to first and last click, 20% to the middle

Going forward, only two attribution models will be available: Data-driven attribution (the default and recommended option) and Last click.

What to do:

• Go to Google Ads → Tools → Conversions
• Check which attribution model each of your conversion actions is using
• If any are set to the four models being removed, switch them to Data-driven attribution before mid-July
• Data-driven attribution is Google’s recommended model — it uses machine learning to assign credit based on actual conversion path data from your account

Standalone call ads stop serving entirely by February 2027

• From February 2026 — no new standalone call ads can be created
• Existing call ads continue running for now
• From February 2027 — all standalone call ads stop serving entirely

The replacement: Add your phone number as a call asset to your existing Responsive Search Ads. This achieves the same result — your phone number appears directly in the ad — but within the more flexible RSA format that supports all other ad assets too.

What to do right now:

• Check if you have any standalone call ad campaigns running
• Create Responsive Search Ads for those campaigns if you haven’t already
• Add a call asset with your phone number to those RSA campaigns
• Don’t wait until February 2027 — the sooner you migrate, the more performance data your new RSAs can accumulate

Your always-on AI strategic partner across all Google marketing tools

Think of Ask Advisor as a marketing assistant that can see across all your Google products simultaneously. You can ask it questions like:

• “Why did my conversions drop last week?”
• “Which campaigns are most efficient at driving revenue?”
• “What should I do to improve my Performance Max results?”
• “Show me which landing pages have the highest bounce rate from paid traffic”

Rather than switching between Google Ads, Analytics, and Merchant Center separately, Ask Advisor connects the dots across all of them and gives you a unified answer in plain language.

Our take: This is genuinely useful for saving time on cross-platform analysis. The quality of its answers depends entirely on the quality of your tracking and data setup. If your conversion tracking is broken or your Analytics is misconfigured, Ask Advisor will give you confident-sounding but misleading answers. As always — fix your data foundations first.

Your July 2026 Google Ads checklist — in order of urgency

1. TODAY — Check budget-limited campaigns
   Identify every campaign marked “Limited by budget.” Check actual CPA/ROAS vs target. If actual is better than target, lower your target now — before the August 17 change raises your costs.
2. JULY 6 — Use the Bid Target Adjustment Tool
   When you get the notification in Google Ads, open the tool and apply recommended target adjustments across all affected campaigns.
3. MID-JULY — Update attribution models
   Switch any conversion actions using first click, linear, time decay, or position-based attribution to data-driven attribution before Google removes them.
4. THIS MONTH — Test Smart Bidding Exploration
   If you run Performance Max, enable Smart Bidding Exploration with a conservative ROAS tolerance. Monitor for 30 days.
5. THIS MONTH — Migrate call ads
   If you run standalone call ads, create RSA equivalents with call assets now. Don’t wait until February 2027.
6. ONGOING — Try Ask Advisor
   Start using Ask Advisor for cross-platform reporting questions. It saves significant time on analysis if your data is clean.