Skip to content

PPC ·

Shopping accounts report collapse after Google's 17 August Smart Bidding change

The one thing

Four independent r/PPC threads describe the same failure pattern following Google's 17 August Smart Bidding change to target-based bidding on budget-constrained campaigns: tROAS is now enforced literally, so the widespread tactic of setting a low target and letting Google overshoot it no longer works.

Reported symptoms are consistent across accounts - CPCs rising sharply (one Standard Shopping account went from $1.30 to $11-12), conversion rates falling, spend drifting toward upper-funnel and competitor queries, and a threshold loop where raising tROAS slightly above recent actuals throttles delivery entirely.

This is exactly the signal a community source exists to catch: no vendor blog has covered it, and four accounts describing the same behaviour in 48 hours is not coincidence. Split your own CPC and ROAS data at 17 August before assuming seasonality.

Quiet but watch it

  • If the literal-target behaviour holds, every tROAS target set under the old overshoot behaviour is now mis-set in the unprofitable direction. That is an account-wide re-derivation, not a per-campaign tweak.

1 story in full

high impactact on it

Standard Shopping (budget-capped, high AOV dropshipping) collapsed after the August 17th Smart Bidding update. tROAS throttling or tanking. Switch to Maximize Conversion Value?

r/PPC ·

TLDR

  • Four separate r/PPC threads in two days report the same pattern after Google's 17 August Smart Bidding change to target-based bidding on budget-constrained campaigns.
  • The consistent symptom: tROAS is now enforced literally. Accounts that set a low target and let Google overshoot (400% target returning 1,000-5,000%) now get results close to the target instead.
  • Side effects reported: CPCs "skyrocketing" (one Standard Shopping account went from $1.30 to $11-12), conversion rate falling, and spend drifting to upper-funnel and competitor queries.
  • One account describes a threshold loop: raising ad-group tROAS slightly above recent actuals throttles delivery completely, but leaving it low burns budget at the new CPCs.
  • Google's stated intent was that budget-limited campaigns "optimize more consistently toward the target". These reports are consistent with that working as designed.

Why it matters

The low-target-and-let-it-overshoot strategy was load-bearing for a lot of e-commerce Shopping accounts. If Google now hits the target rather than beating it, the target is the outcome — and every target set under the old behaviour is now mis-set, in the unprofitable direction.

What to do

  • Pull CPC, ROAS and conversion rate for Shopping and Search by day, split at 17 August. A step change there is this, not seasonality.
  • Re-derive tROAS targets from the margin you actually need, not from the historical target that used to overshoot.
  • On budget-capped campaigns, test Maximize Conversion Value without a target — several practitioners are moving that way — but treat it as a test with a spend cap, not a fix.

Corroborating threads: "Is tROAS dead after August 17?", "Standard Shopping CPC suddenly went from $1.30 to $11-12", "2 weeks into Google's Aug 17 bidding update" (all r/PPC).