All Available Bid Strategies in Google Ads (Updated for 2025 Best Practices)

Choosing the right bid strategy in Google Ads can feel like navigating a maze. With so many options, which one will actually help you hit your goals? Whether you’re aiming to drive traffic, boost conversions, or grow your revenue, this guide breaks down all of Google Ads’ bid strategies, updated for 2025, to help you make an informed choice.

Think of this as your go-to resource for determining which strategy best suits your needs and helps you avoid wasting money.

What Are Google Ads Bid Strategies, and Why Do They Matter?

At its core, a bid strategy determines how Google places your ads and how much you’ll pay for those placements or clicks. Whether you want more clicks, conversions, or brand visibility, your strategy tells Google how to use your budget effectively.

Getting this right can make or break your campaign’s success. The right strategy ensures your money goes toward results that align with your goals, whether that’s increasing traffic to your website, generating more sales, or simply ensuring your brand is visible.

1. Manual CPC (Cost-Per-Click)

Manual CPC gives you full control over how much you’re willing to pay for each click on each keyword. This is the old-school way of bidding—hands-on and hyper-specific.

• Best For: Advertisers who want to control bids oncampaigns or jump start a tricky campaign that will not spend.
• Example: A local coffee shop sets a $2 CPC to promote their “50% Off Your First Latte” campaign. They manually tweak bids for “coffee near me” based on what’s performing.
• Pro Tip:  Use this strategy if you want full control of your bids and budgets. Just know it takes more effort to manage well—and Google’s automated options often outperform manual bids these days. But, there are still instances where simply manually bidding lower on something can outperform any automated bid.
• Brand Bidding Tip: If you’re bidding on your own brand terms, manual bidding can save you a ton of money. Test it—you might be pleasantly surprised.

2. Maximize Clicks

This strategy tells Google to get you as many clicks as possible within your daily budget.

• Best For: Driving traffic to your site, especially for awareness campaigns or new product launches.
• Example: An online boutique launching a new collection uses Maximize Clicks to get more eyes on their product pages.
• Watch Out For: Google might chase quantity over quality. Make sure you’ve done proper keyword research, use negative keywords, and have solid targeting in place.
• Pro Tip: Set a Max CPC limit. We’ve audited plenty of accounts where CPCs spiraled without one.

3. Maximize Conversions

Google sets your bids to get you the most conversions possible for your budget.

• Best For: Campaigns with clear conversion goals like form fills, purchases, or sign-ups.
• Example: A subscription meal kit brand runs ads to get sign-ups. Using Maximize Conversions, they focus on people likely to subscribe.
• Pro Tip: Make sure your conversion tracking is on point and that you have some volume. This strategy is only as good as the data you feed it. 
• Bonus Tip: Test this strategy against others. Max Conversions doesn’t always deliver the most efficient cost-per-acquisition (CPA).
• Watch Out For: Google will try to spend your budget regardless of whether it’s profitable to you. 

4. Maximize Conversion Value

This strategy focuses on total revenue or value, not just the number of conversions.

• Best For: eCommerce brands with products at different price points and a focus on ROI.
• Example: A tech retailer promotes laptops and phone accessories. Maximize Conversion Value helps prioritize high-ticket buyers and maximize revenue.
• Requirement: Use value-based conversion tracking to make this work. Track actual revenue or set relative values for leads based on quality.
• Watch Out For: Google may ignore low-value products, even if they’re important to your business. Consider splitting campaigns if that’s an issue. Like Maximize Conversions, Google will try to spend your budget regardless of whether it’s profitable to you. 

5. Maximize Conversions with Target CPA (Cost-Per-Acquisition)

This strategy enables Google to try to achieve a specific cost per conversion goal that you set.

• Best For: Controlling acquisition costs and maintaining efficiency.
• Example: A SaaS company sets a $50 Target CPA to acquire new trial users. Google adjusts bids accordingly.
• Pro Tip: Wait until you’ve got at least 15–30 conversions in the last 30 days. That historical data helps the algorithm optimize.
• Bonus Tip: Setting this too low can limit your clicks, impressions, etc. 

6. Maximize Conversion Value with Target ROAS (Return-On-Ad-Spend)

Target ROAS helps you maximize revenue while hitting a specific return goal, like $5 back for every $1 spent.

• Best For: eCommerce and businesses where profit margins matter.
• Example: An online fashion store sets a 400% ROAS target. Google bids more aggressively on high-value prospects and pulls back on lower-value ones.
• Pro Tip: Make sure your conversion values are accurate. If you’re using Google Merchant Center feeds, this strategy shines in Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.
• Bonus Tip: High ROAS doesn’t always mean high revenue. Monitor both ROAS and total sales.

7. Target Impression Share

Want to show up at the top of the page more often? This strategy sets bids to increase your share of impressions.

• Best For: Brand awareness or dominating key competitive keywords.
• Example: A luxury watch brand sets an 80% impression share target for “luxury watches” to own the top ad space.
• Pro Tip: If you have a keyword with extremely high intent, you can run a test to determine if dominating for that keyword is worthwhile. You can also set a CPC bid limit. 
• Limitation: Visibility costs money. This strategy doesn’t optimize for conversions, so watch ROI carefully.

8. Maximize Impressions or Views (Target CPM/Viewable CPM/CPV Bidding)

For Video and Display campaigns, this strategy focuses on getting your ad in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Target CPM and CPV are for Video, and Viewable CPM is for Display. 

• Best For: Awareness campaigns with wide reach goals.
• Example: A new streaming service launches a YouTube campaign using CPM bidding to promote an upcoming series.
• Pro Tip: Use strong audience targeting to ensure you’re not just getting impressions, but relevant ones.
• Bonus Tip: On YouTube, you can also use CPV (cost-per-view) bidding if video views are more valuable than raw impressions.

9. Portfolio Bid Strategies

Portfolio strategies let you use one bidding strategy across multiple campaigns or ad groups.

• Best For: Brands or agencies managing multiple campaigns with the same goals.
• Example: A national gym chain uses one Portfolio strategy across all regional campaigns to manage a unified Target CPA.
• Pro Tip: This simplifies optimization and keeps performance consistent across related campaigns.
• Limitation: You are not able to control where spend goes when multiple campaigns are grouped together. 

Performance Max Bidding: What You Need to Know

Performance Max campaigns only support automated bidding:

• Maximize Conversions
• Maximize Conversion Value
• Maximize Conversions with a Target CPA
• Maximize Conversions with a Target ROAS

Manual CPC is not available. If you’re running Performance Max, your bidding success depends on solid conversion tracking, accurate values, and helpful audience signals.

How to Pick the Right Bid Strategy for Your Campaign

Choosing the right bidding strategy depends on your:

1. Know Your Objective:
   • Brand Awareness? → Target Impression Share or Maximize Impressions
   • Website Traffic? → Maximize Clicks
   • Conversions/Leads? → Target CPA or Maximize Conversions
   • Revenue/Profit? → Target ROAS or Maximize Conversion Value
2. Review Your Data: Campaigns with historical data (15-30 conversions/month) work best for automated strategies like Target CPA, Target ROAS, or Maximize Conversions.
3. Align Your Budget: Stable budgets help automation thrive. If you’re testing or working with tight controls, Manual might work, but only in supported campaign types.
4. Always Test: The best bid strategy is the one that actually works for your business. Run experiments and compare performance regularly.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Skipping Conversion Tracking: Without solid data, Google can’t optimize anything.
• Choosing the Wrong Strategy: Using Maximize Clicks when you care about conversions = wasted spend.
• Set-and-Forget Mentality: Even automated bidding needs regular check-ins and adjustments.

Quick Comparison Table

Bid Strategy	Goal	Automation	Best For
Manual CPC	Click control	Manual	Brand terms, hands-on testing, some new campaigns
Maximize Clicks	Website traffic	Automated	Awareness, high-traffic goals
Maximize Conversions	Conversion volume	Automated	Lead gen, quick signup growth
Maximize Conversion Value	Revenue	Automated	eCommerce, revenue growth
Target CPA	Cost efficiency per conversion	Automated	Lead gen with return goals
Target ROAS	Profitability	Automated	eCommerce with return goals
Target Impression Share	Brand visibility	Automated	Awareness, competitive terms
Maximize Impressions (CPM/CPV)	Reach / Views	Automated	YouTube, Display awareness
Portfolio Bid Strategies	Strategy across campaigns	Varies	Multi-campaign management

Getting your Google Ads bid strategy right can transform your campaigns in 2025. From driving clicks to boosting sales, the key is matching the strategy to your goals, and letting Google’s tools work for you (with a close eye on performance, of course).

If you’re unsure where to start, begin by testing a Manual or Maximize Conversions strategy and scale from there based on what’s working. Remember that Google allows you to run Experiments, so you can test bidding strategies without fully committing. Keep your data clean, your goals clear, and your optimization game strong.

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