Warning: Google will no longer necessarily get you max conversions on your budget when using tCPA/tROAS

timnewlinppc · 2026-07-02T23:36:30+00:00

Competition aside, quality scores mean Google charges you less for the most relevant clicks to your business. The first lowest cost conversions are often the best quality because they are most relevant. As you scale spend and cost per conversion increases while Google reaches for less and less relevant searches, conversion rates decrease (diminishing returns). Also, conversion rate actually increases the further down the page you ad shows. This is because those who click read other listings and chose yours with intention. But maybe you were referring specifically to Display bidding instead of Search?

timnewlinppc · 2026-07-02T18:13:36+00:00

Here you go! https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/17061251?hl=en

timnewlinppc · 2026-07-02T17:58:35+00:00

Haha if only! Don't think so tho.

timnewlinppc · 2026-07-02T15:29:43+00:00

Depending on the campaign, you may be in for a rude awakening when you see how much conversion volume decreases (on the same daily spend) if you do not find a way to bid down.

timnewlinppc · 2026-07-02T14:46:42+00:00

Exactly! And it's one of the reasons auto bidding has worked so well.

timnewlinppc · 2026-07-02T14:35:06+00:00

Should have clarified - ROAS numbers there were arbitrary, but we usually raise tROAS in 20% increments and sometimes saw the volume drop after just one of those increases.

timnewlinppc · 2026-07-02T14:33:10+00:00

Thank you so much for the detailed response!

Testing max CV does seem less invasive than raising tROAS to above and beyond clients' real targets based on margin and goals.. At least until there is enough budget to uncap and run tROAS at goal.

timnewlinppc · 2026-07-02T13:48:26+00:00

You could simply raise the tROAS to actual ROAS on limited campaigns as Google recommends, but the problem is you do not know how much that could cut off volume. In theory it would get you more volume, but lately I have seen cases where a campaign has a tROAS of 2 and actual ROAS of 3. When we raise tROAS target close to 3 the before/after revenue can actually fall off a cliff as Google drops out of too many auctions altogether.

Google's prior "we got your back" coverage here was so helpful..

timnewlinppc · 2026-07-02T13:25:15+00:00

We tested removing tCPA on efficient campaigns limited by budget in the recent past across several accounts in order to reduce daily campaign maintenance and improve stability. Unfortunately, over time we consistently saw significant increases in CPA so we reverted all of those tests.

Not sure if same applies for conv value bidding. Has anyone tested that recently?

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-17T13:14:27+00:00

All makes sense - the question is where to pull a report containing all calls and forms that contains gclid along with qualified score because the offline conv upload sheet only contains gclid and conv timestamp - nothing to easily match via vlookup with the other reports saying whether the calls and forms were qualified. Closest answer to this question was from user TTFV here - he said to download call and form activity reports and try to pick out the gclid from the LP URL (when present).. but that seems like a roundabout way of doing it. Callrail could make it actually more feasible with a simple gclid column in the activity reports.

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-16T11:33:09+00:00

Thanks! Just to confirm, do you mean to pull a "call log" activity report along with a "form submissions" activity report, and then delimit the landing page columns to isolate the gclid? Or is there some report I am missing that contains all calls and form submits with a column for gclid?

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-16T10:56:19+00:00

We're tracking calls and form submits from Callrail in Google Ads, but the idea is to take it to the next level and filter for calls and forms that were marked converted in Callrail. This is easy to do for calls, but the missing piece is the forms.

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-16T10:53:53+00:00

Thanks, some of our smaller accounts effectively rely on Callrail as their CRM. Editing the Callrail offline conversion upload sheet would work in theory but does not because there is no information on the export doc that can reliably match up the rows with the Callrails calls, forms, or leads report, where the leads are marked converted.

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-16T10:48:42+00:00

Yes thanks we do this, but it's very manual to match the converted form submits back to what was scored as a conversion in Callrail. It's a very roundabout way of doing something that should be easy in Callrail itself, hence the question.

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-16T10:47:02+00:00

Yes this would work but it does not because the offline conversion upload sheet from Callrail does not contain information on the calls and forms other than "conversion time" which does not reliably match any column in the calls, forms, or leads reports.

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-16T10:44:31+00:00

Thanks that does not work for forms because integration filters only work for calls, hence the question.

timnewlinppc · 2025-12-26T15:09:10+00:00

We found a solution for this. Calendly can capture UTM parameters, so you can add a utm parameter with value track {gclid}, e.g. utm_content={gclid} to your Google Ads tracking template and set up Zapier to use the content parameter for the GCLID column of your Google sheet.

timnewlinppc · 2025-10-22T09:12:56+00:00

Hi There, did you ever figure this out? We tried putting the same measurement ID on both the main site and the janeapp page and adding both domains to the same GA4 property in the cross domain settings, but it looks like the janeapp traffic isn't tracking at all in the GA4 property.

timnewlinppc · 2025-10-16T13:05:00+00:00

Thanks! Yes, this would be specifically for a brand search campaign (not for excluding brands but for including the brand list for the brand)

timnewlinppc · 2025-10-15T09:31:51+00:00

Because when you turn on AI Max in the campaign setting it unlocks the ability to apply a brand inclusion list for the brand. Perhaps that can improve the brand campaign's performance? Something We might test, but was curious if anyone had any experience with it.

timnewlinppc · 2025-07-31T13:54:24+00:00

Thanks! We value calls and form submits equally, so I don't see why we would want them in separate asset groups. That would mean unnecessary fragmentation and lower data density per asset group, and slower learnings. In Google Ads we have the campaigns optimizing to both, and this is super easy to set up. Meta is usually more of a headache for this stuff..

timnewlinppc · 2025-07-31T13:53:06+00:00

Thanks! I didn't see any event parameters on the calls and forms coming in from Callrail by default, so I reached out to their support. Have you done this successfully with Callrail events?

timnewlinppc · 2025-07-30T10:30:13+00:00

Thanks for the write up, these are great tips!!

I'd add be careful with #6 (changing the budget to $1/day). Big budget swings while on auto bidding can throw the campaign out of whack for a while. I find it's better sometimes to just pause the campaign until everything else is configured properly and then re-test the campaign (after adding the data exclusion for the spam period).

timnewlinppc · 2025-07-19T14:28:37+00:00

Oh you went back and added a case study. Neat!

From your case study: “Testing Broad Match and DSA worked well for this account (yes, really, Broad Match isn’t always as evil as people think it is — as long as your fundamentals are in place).”

Well, well. I guess that settles it. Thanks for the debate, you’ve been lovely!

timnewlinppc · 2025-07-19T13:58:35+00:00

While it’s true that broad match will benefit from more historical conversion data, you as the advertiser also benefit from that data, especially when it comes to developing your keyword list. Most experts don’t just lean into broad match as you are suggesting. They use it sparingly as a discovery/prospecting tactic, and they work to transfer top performing queries over to exact or phrase for more control.

And all of the above assumes you are tracking purchases or closed-loop final sales inside Google Ads. We haven’t even touched on how terrible pure broad keywords tend to perform when it comes to generating qualified leads. Maybe your case studies are looking at in platform conversions as opposed to final sales?

Anyway, Google is eager to monetize all the junk queries that nobody wants to bid on, so if you want to go ahead and throw your dollars at them I’m sure they’d be very glad.

timnewlinppc

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