Google said its Smart Bidding update would make budget-limited campaigns perform closer to target. Across our ecommerce accounts, we’re seeing something far more concerning: the same spend buying dramatically fewer clicks, CPCs climbing as much as 3–25x, and revenue falling sharply—especially for smaller advertisers. We dug into the data across our portfolio to show what changed, why we believe it’s happening, and what advertisers running budget-capped tROAS or tCPA campaigns should do about it now.

For years, PMax handed you the Display Network whether you wanted it or not. There was no toggle, no opt-out, nothing. That's finally starting to change.

“Dig lots of small holes often instead of one very deep one.”‍ If I were to summarize this entire article into one sentence, that would be it.I had a client once with a few SKUs in the home decor sector. We went through a slight price increase on the website and the one campaign in the account dipped in performance.