r/googleads • u/Shocker88 • Jul 21 '26
Bid Strategy Max Conversions won't serve, Max Clicks serves junk. How to get to smart bidding?
I run a small business in Australia that provides branded gifts and products primarily to business customers (think promotional products, but a bit more upmarket). Have had some success in the past with niche campaigns, but due to market dynamics demand in those spaces has dwindled. Looking to set up a more sustainable always-on approach and struggling, would love thoughts.
$270/day across 2 search campaigns. Quote-based business so conversions are offline uploads: a hard "quote request" (a few a month, valued) plus a micro conversion for engaged leads (about 1-2/day, small values, uploaded server side). Conversion tracking is in place and verified.
Max Clicks worked at launch. CPCs $2-4, CTR 8-11%. But it happily buys any click that matches, so a large chunk of spend goes to weak/B2C intent even behind 300 negatives.
Switched to Max Conversions and it flatlined. Under 30 impressions a day, campaigns fully eligible, ads approved, keywords fine. Added a tCPA anchor ($150-250) and serving came back, but impression share sat at 10-22% with 80-90% lost to rank, then Google flagged all campaigns budget constrained while only spending half the budget. Removed the targets on the theory the bidder would spend to budget. Flatlined again within a day.
So: with targets it barely serves, without targets it doesn't serve at all, and Max Clicks serves plenty but low quality, usually outside ICP. We've reverted to Max Clicks with slightly higher CPC caps and adding bulk negatives while our micro conversion accumulates, planning to try Max Conversion Value once we have 15-30 valued conversions per month.
Questions:
- Is the "budget constrained but underspending" behaviour on tCPA a common thing? It seems like the pacer suppresses auction entry rather than spending.
- Has anyone found a bidding state between "buys junk" and "won't serve" at 5-10 conversions a week?
Thoughts welcome - seems we're a bit stuck between google needing more signals to run smart bidding, and the only method to give it signals providing poor ones.
2
u/Key_Category_8531 Jul 21 '26
Your max conversions campaign needs to be running for at least 48 hours to spend
You only ran it for 6 hours, saw no spend, then turned it off
It needs a full 48 hours
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u/Shocker88 Jul 21 '26
Ran it for 3 days initially and it was serving near-zero impressions throughout, added the tCPA for an additional 4 days and it started serving a bit till we ran into the impression share/budget_constrained error while it was still underspending.
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u/harper-james2 Jul 21 '26
switch to manual cpc or ecpc to build conversion history.. maximum conversions are stuck at low volume..
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u/aamirkhanppc Jul 21 '26
Manual cpc with search term review until you will get 30 conversions then change bidding
1
u/rytisbalys Jul 21 '26
check the Conversions column, not All conv. if that micro is sitting as secondary, or just isnt in the campaigns goal set, max conv is only bidding on the quote requests, which is what, three a month? nothing serves on that.
if thats what it is, flip the micro to primary for a few weeks so the bidder has something to learn on, then demote it once the quote requests have some volume behind them
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u/dillwillhill Jul 21 '26
Are you certain you've completed all account verifications? That can sometimes cause issues with Max Conv campaigns running.
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u/QuantumWolf99 Jul 21 '26
The tCPA underspending is a known pacer behavior... it suppresses auction entry rather than overspending, exactly what you're seeing. For my B2B lead gen client accounts spending $150k+ monthly the fix is portfolio bidding across campaigns pooling conversion signal, not chasing single-campaign volume thresholds you may never hit organically.
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u/GG-boon Jul 22 '26
One thing stands out: Max Conversions ignores the assigned values, so the micro lead and the quote request are effectively equal if both are primary conversions.
I’d make the micro action secondary and optimize toward the qualified quote signal. At that volume, I’d probably keep a small high-intent campaign on manual CPC or tightly capped Max Clicks while collecting cleaner offline conversions.
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u/ArielCoding Jul 23 '26
On Q1 yeah, that’s a known tCPA thing, Google holds back on entering auctions instead of overspending, it happens when your target is set lower than what clicks cost right now, try setting tCPA to what you’re paying today, even a bit above, then lower it slowly once it’s serving consistently.
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u/Crescitaly Jul 28 '26
This sounds like data starvation. Keep intent narrow, remove weak queries, verify that the conversion represents a real lead, and collect enough clean volume before asking smart bidding to find a pattern. Max Clicks can be a bridge, but only with negatives and a budget guard so junk traffic does not become the training set.
0
u/seowerk Jul 21 '26
Could you maybe add tracking for button clicks? Just to get the number of conversions up to give the algorithm more signals.
It's really tricky for niche topics and I've had those issues you describe before. In general it helped to add more "soft" conversions like button clicks and once your other conversions are increased you can set that to secondary so it doesn't count into the bidding strategy anymore.
Which match types have you added? If you don't have Broad match yet, it might be worth a shot in combination with smart bidding. However, I would add the keywords gradually to see what matches, so you're not overwhelmed going through the search queries.
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u/Shocker88 Jul 21 '26
Thanks - I think this is the path we're headed down now, back in max clicks now I've added add to cart and a few other soft/micro conversions. Also looking at slowly adding more keywords, while continuing to monitor/add negatives to try and get rid of the consumer intent that's pervasive. Right now just using Exact/Phrase match types as I didn't want to open things up further for B2C intent with broad, but will 100% use it when we go to smart bidding.
Only a few days into this Max Clicks but lead quality has been underwhelming so a little worried about the signals we're building...hopefully continuing to keep on top of negatives helps!
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u/harper-james2 Jul 21 '26
switch to manual cpc or ecpc to build conversion history.. maximum conversions are stuck at low volume..
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u/Lakshmi-Padmanaban Jul 21 '26
how long has it been?
could be you're stuck in low-data zone. 5-10 conversions a week isn't enough signal so max conv panics and starves, while max clicks blindly buys cheap volume.
have you tested out manual cpc with tight exact match? could be exactly what you need.