GOOGLE ADS UPDATE
Google's Target CPA and ROAS bidding change hit August 17th
Written by ScalePros Team
The ScalePros team writes about SEO and content strategy for ScalePros Media, helping Southern Ontario businesses create blog content that earns rankings and builds trust.
The ScalePros team writes about SEO and content strategy for ScalePros Media, helping Southern Ontario businesses create blog content that earns rankings and builds trust.
Published August 21, 2026
It’s been four days since Google changed how Target CPA and Target ROAS bidding behaves for campaigns it labels “Limited by budget.” If you’ve checked your account since, you’ve almost certainly landed in one of three places: it looks better, it looks like it’s on fire, or it looks basically the same with a few numbers nudged. Which one you’re looking at tells you exactly what to do next, and none of the three answers is “panic.”
The 30-second version of what changed
Target CPA and Target ROAS bidding aim for a number you set. Before August 17, a campaign that was “Limited by budget,” meaning it couldn’t spend enough to fully chase that target, often landed somewhere better than the target instead. Good CPA, good ROAS, nobody asked why.
As of August 17, Google’s systems optimise more consistently toward the actual target, even on budget-limited campaigns. Your spend cap hasn’t changed. What changed is whether your target gets to hide behind a small budget anymore. For a lot of accounts, it no longer does.
That’s the whole mechanism. Everything below is about what it looks like when it hits your specific account, because it doesn’t hit every account the same way.
Bucket 1: Your account looks healthy
What you’re seeing: conversion rate holding or up, CPA flat or lower, average CPC flat or lower. Nothing dramatic. If anything, things look mildly better than before.
What it actually means: either this campaign was never “Limited by budget” to begin with, so August 17 simply didn’t apply to it, or it was budget-limited with a target that was already realistic, meaning there was no gap between “what we were getting” and “what the target says we should get” for the change to expose. Either way, this is the good outcome, and it’s not a fluke you need to be suspicious of.
What to do: confirm the campaign’s budget-limited status just so you know which explanation applies to you, then leave it alone. This is a legitimate moment to test a modest budget increase if the campaign has been visibly capped, since a healthy account absorbing more spend is one of the few genuinely good times to scale.
Bucket 2: Your account looks like it’s out of control
What you’re seeing: conversion rate down, CPA up, CPC up, all at once, and it feels sudden. This is the account that makes you open Google Ads on a Sunday.
What it actually means: check the “Limited by budget” label before anything else. If the campaign carries it, this is very likely the expected outcome of August 17, not a malfunction. The campaign was quietly beating a target that was never actually realistic once the algorithm had room to fully chase it, and now it’s chasing it. The bad-looking numbers are the honest numbers. They were always going to show up eventually. August 17 just picked the date.
If the campaign does not carry that label, this update almost certainly isn’t your cause, and you’re looking at something else entirely, creative fatigue, a competitor who just entered the auction, a tracking issue, seasonality. Don’t blame August 17 for a problem it didn’t create.
What to do: for a budget-limited campaign, open Google’s Bid Target Adjustment Tool and look at what it’s actually recommending before you touch anything manually. Raise the target if the current one was never realistic, rather than fighting the algorithm to hold a number it’s now being honest about. Do not respond by increasing budget. That solves a problem this update didn’t create, and won’t touch the one it did.
Bucket 3: Somewhere in the middle
What you’re seeing: CPA up a bit, or CPC up slightly, but conversion rate hasn’t moved much, or one metric shifted while the others held. Nothing screaming, nothing worth a Sunday panic, just enough to notice.
What it actually means: this is genuinely the most common outcome, and it usually means the gap between your old target and reality wasn’t huge to begin with. The campaign is settling into a new, slightly less flattering, more honest baseline rather than getting rewritten.
What to do: give it seven to ten days before drawing conclusions. Bidding systems need a data window to fully adjust, and reacting to day two or three of a multi-week shift is how good targets get changed for the wrong reasons. Use the waiting period productively: review the target anyway, since “it wasn’t a big gap” is not the same as “the target was correct,” and this is a natural moment to tighten it deliberately instead of waiting for the next algorithm change to do it for you.
The one check that applies to all three buckets
Whichever bucket you’re in, the “Limited by budget” label is doing all the explanatory work here. It’s the difference between “this is the update” and “this is something else that happens to have occurred in the same week.” Check it before you touch a target, a budget, or a pause button. It takes about thirty seconds and it’s the single most useful thirty seconds you can spend on this whole update.
Frequently asked questions
Probably not. Check whether the campaign is labelled “Limited by budget.” If it is, a higher CPA is very likely the target finally being enforced, not a broken campaign. Review the target itself before assuming something failed.
No. Your daily and monthly budget caps are still fully respected. This affects how Target CPA and Target ROAS bidding behave inside your existing budget, not the size of the budget itself.
Confirm the campaign wasn’t “Limited by budget” to begin with, since that’s why the change wouldn’t have touched it. Otherwise, no action needed beyond your normal monitoring.
No. Google has said plainly it will not adjust your targets or budgets for you. Google published a Bid Target Adjustment Tool specifically so advertisers can review and revise targets themselves.
Not sure which bucket your account is actually in?
Send it to us. We’ll tell you honestly whether August 17 is the cause, and exactly what your targets should look like if it is. Get a free quote from ScalePros Media.
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Hamilton and Mississauga, serving all of Southern Ontario, Canada
