Every Google Ads Bid Strategy Explained (And Which Ones to Avoid)

I’ve made over $150 million in ecommerce revenue from Google Ads for my clients, and if there’s one thing that separates the winners from the ones burning cash, it’s this:

Understanding Google Ads Bid Strategies.

Your bid strategy is one of the highest-priority settings to get right. Pick the wrong one, and you’ll either overpay or throttle your results.

In this blog post I’m going to break down every Google Ads bidding strategy, explaining when to use them and when to avoid them.

Click-Focused Bidding: Getting the Most Traffic

Click-Focused Bidding: Getting the Most Traffic

Click-focused bidding is about maximising traffic rather than conversions. Here are the two main options:

1. Manual CPC (Cost-Per-Click)

  • Gives you full control over bids, but requires constant monitoring.

  • Works when conversion tracking isn’t set up or conversion volumes are very low (under 30 per month).

  • Otherwise, avoid it — automated strategies outperform it.

2. Maximise Clicks

  • Google sets bids to get you as many clicks as possible within your budget.

  • Ideal for new Standard Shopping campaigns (since Maximise Conversions isn’t available for them).

  • Works if your conversion tracking is broken, but outside of that, avoid it.

Pro Tip: With any “Maximise” bid strategy, performance is controlled indirectly via the daily budget. Lowering the budget = lower CPC bids. Increasing it = higher CPC bids.

Conversion-Focused (Smart Bidding): AI-Driven Results

Smart Bidding strategies use Google’s AI to optimise for conversions. These are the best options for direct-response advertisers.

3. Maximise Conversions

  • Focuses on getting the most conversions possible within your daily budget.

  • Ideal for new campaigns in lead gen, Performance Max, Search, Display, and YouTube.

  • If your lead generation campaign/account already has hundreds of conversions, skip this and go straight to Target CPA.

4. Maximise Conversion Value

  • Like Maximise Conversions, but optimises for revenue instead of just conversion volume.

  • Use this for new ecommerce campaigns in PMax, Search, Display, and YouTube.

  • If your ROAS is too high and you want to scale, increase the budget while using this strategy.

  • If you’re spending unprofitably, reduce the budget to increase ROAS.

5. Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)

  • Gets as many conversions as possible at a target CPA.

  • Best for lead generation campaigns with at least 30 conversions.

  • If launching a new lead gen campaign but your account has hundreds of conversions, you can start here instead of Maximise Conversions.

6. Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

  • Like Maximise Conversion Value, but aims for a specific ROAS target.

  • Recommended for ecommerce campaigns with at least 50 conversions.

  • If your ecommerce account already has hundreds of conversions, you can start with this instead of Maximise Conversion Value.

Impression-Focused Bidding: Buying Visibility

These strategies prioritise ad impressions over conversions. Good for brand awareness, but not recommended for direct-response advertisers.

7. Target Impression Share

  • Aims for a specific percentage of the market share.

  • Not recommended for branded search—Smart Bidding is better.

  • Works for advanced “buy the market” strategies where you dominate specific high-value keywords.

8. Manual CPM (Cost Per Mille)

  • Pays per 1,000 impressions.

  • Typically used for Display campaigns, but not recommended unless you’re a big brand.

9. Target CPM (tCPM)

  • Like Manual CPM, but with an average CPM target.

  • Not useful for direct response.

10. Viewable CPM (vCPM)

  • Pays for impressions actually seen by users.

  • More effective than Manual CPM but still not useful for conversions.

Video-Focused Bidding: Paying for Views

11. Max Cost Per View (CPV)

  • Pays only when a user watches 30+ seconds of your video.

  • Not recommended unless conversion tracking is broken and you need to keep traffic flowing.

  • Instead, use Target CPA or Maximise Conversions for YouTube ads.

The Secret Weapon: Bid Strategy Portfolios

If you’ve made it this far, here’s the bonus tip that will massively improve your bidding strategy:

Use Bid Strategy Portfolios

Use Bid Strategy Portfolios

This allows multiple campaigns to share conversion data, leading to better performance. Here’s how:

  1. In Google Ads, go to Tools > Budgets & Bidding > Bid Strategies.

  2. Click the + button and create a new portfolio.

  3. Name it after the bid strategy you’re using (e.g., “Target ROAS - 400%”).

  4. Select all campaigns using the same strategy and add them to the portfolio.

  5. Save and watch Google’s AI optimise performance across all campaigns.

Why does this work?

  • If you have 10 campaigns with 10 conversions each, Smart Bidding struggles.

  • By grouping them into a portfolio, the system sees 100 conversions, leading to better bid decisions.

Final Thoughts

Your bid strategy is one of the biggest levers you can pull in Google Ads.

  • For ecommerce → Use Maximise Conversion Value, then move to Target ROAS.

  • For lead generation → Start with Maximise Conversions, then move to Target CPA.

  • For brand awareness → Target Impression Share or CPM-based bidding if you’re a big brand.

That’s it for today — hope you found this useful!

Best,
Daryl