Smart Bidding: 42 Days, the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Your Bids
This week, Google Ads published a “clarification” on its Smart Bidding update, after advertisers started getting nervous. Search Engine Journal sums it up: the changes touch Target CPA, Target ROAS, and budget-constrained campaigns, effective August 17.
Between today and August 17, there are 42 days.
Sci-fi readers already caught it. 42 is the answer the supercomputer Deep Thought gives to “the great question of life, the universe, and everything,” in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The problem, in the book and here: nobody knows the actual question. We got the number, not the explanation.
What we actually know
Three things change on August 17: how Target CPA behaves, how Target ROAS behaves, and the logic behind budget-constrained campaigns.
Google does explain the direction. These budget-constrained campaigns often run below their target today: a $35 Target CPA that plays out at $20 in practice. On August 17, the algorithm stops favoring those “safest” bids and aims closer to the target actually set, spending more of the budget to get there if needed. Google also notes budgets and targets don’t move on their own, that stays in the advertiser’s hands.
What’s missing is the number, per account. Google says “closer to target,” not “by how much.” Every advertiser gets their own version of that answer on August 17, not before.
A deadline is not an answer
Here’s the funny part. Google calls this a “clarification,” meant to reassure worried advertisers. Except a clarification is supposed to go down to the detail that actually matters to you. What we got is the direction, not the size of the move. Before, we didn’t know what was shifting. Now we know which way, just not by how much, or in your own account specifically.
What a media trader checks before August 17
No panic, no improvising either. Three concrete things to check in your accounts this week.
Find the campaigns already running Target CPA or Target ROAS close to their budget cap. Those are the first ones that will move if the budget-constrained logic changes.
Take a snapshot of current performance (CPA, ROAS, volume) before August 17. Without a baseline, there’s no way to tell afterward whether a shift came from Google’s change or from something else entirely.
Resist the urge to manually recalibrate everything right now based on a press article. The change isn’t live yet. Moving bids on a rumor is the fastest way to confuse your own noise with Google’s.
August 17 isn’t the answer. It’s just the day we finally learn the number.