The New Google Ads Bidding Update (tCPA and tROAS): What It Means and How to Prepare

The Google Ads ecosystem continues to evolve to make algorithm performance more predictable. Looking ahead to August 17, 2026, Google has announced a major update that will directly affect the behavior of budget-constrained campaigns using target-based bidding strategies, such as tCPA (Target CPA) and tROAS (Target ROAS).

If you manage campaigns for clients or for your own business, now is the time to review your settings to keep performance under control.

What Exactly Is Changing?

Until now, the Google Ads algorithm was fairly flexible. Many campaigns limited by budget achieved results that were significantly better than the configured target. For example, you might have set a tCPA of $10, but the system managed to optimize delivery down to a real CPA of $5.

With this new update, that "wiggle room" disappears: campaigns will stop proactively searching for that extra margin below your set target.

A Practical Example:

If you configured a tCPA of $10 but were regularly getting conversions at $5, starting August 17, the algorithm will focus its efforts on finding conversions at your original target price ($10). This means your actual cost per conversion could rise to align with the higher limit you originally defined.

On the bright side, Google assures that this change will make bidding performance much more predictable and stable, preventing the chaotic performance swings that sometimes occurred when making sudden budget changes.

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Three Strategic Options for Your Accounts

Google will not make automatic adjustments to your campaigns, so optimization is entirely in your hands. Since early July, a new "Bidding Target Adjustment Tool" has been available in your dashboard (visible if you have had budget-limited campaigns in the last 12 months).

Depending on your accounts' performance, you can choose one of three paths:

1. Align Targets with Real Performance: If a campaign is performing better than its theoretical goal, you can apply the tool’s recommendation to adjust your tCPA or tROAS to match recent actual metrics (following the previous example, lowering your target to $5 to protect that low cost).
2. Switch Strategies Temporarily: If you prefer to prioritize conversion volume with your current budget while the new algorithm stabilizes, you can switch to Maximize Conversions (without a target CPA).
3. Scale the Budget: If the campaign's results are excellent and the return on investment justifies it, this is a great time to increase your daily budget, taking advantage of the fact that the algorithm will now respond much more predictably.

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How to Streamline This Technical Transition

For marketing managers and account executives, technical updates like this usually mean hours of manual audits, historical analysis, and account-by-account adjustments to avoid nasty surprises in performance reports.

Tools like Dolnai are built precisely to simplify this transition. Acting as a technical co-pilot, Dolnai helps you:

• Analyze Historical Performance in just minutes to make informed decisions about your new bidding targets.
• Detect Inefficiencies and low-value clicks to keep costs under control, regardless of algorithm updates.
• Structure Your Campaigns strategically, freeing your team from technical overhead so they can focus on what they do best: driving business growth.

The August 17 update is an excellent opportunity to fine-tune your accounts and build a stronger foundation for your campaigns. Here you can find the post from Google Support.

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Try Dolnai for Free and discover how to simplify your Google Ads technical optimization.

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