Google’s August bidding change lifted CPCs 15.8% in budget-limited campaigns

Median cost per click in budget-limited Google Ads campaigns rose 15.8% after 17 August 2026. The figure comes from Mike Ryan, head of ecommerce insights at Smarter Ecommerce. He compared campaign data from before and after the change. Google finished the global rollout on 27 August 2026.

Median click price moved from 0.38 to 0.44 euro in limited campaigns

Ryan’s numbers show the two groups of campaigns moving apart. In campaigns held back by budget, the median click price went from 0.38 euro to 0.44 euro. In campaigns with room left in the budget it fell about 13%, to 0.33 euro. “CPCs are rising for budgeted-limited campaigns,” Ryan wrote. The cheap clicks did not vanish. They went to advertisers who were not capped.

Google changed how five campaign types follow their targets

Google altered the way budget-limited campaigns on Target CPA, Target ROAS and Target CPC follow their numbers. The change covers Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen and Travel. Display and Hotel campaigns already worked this way. App campaigns and the two video types are not affected. Google’s own example is blunt. A campaign with a 10 dollar target CPA that was really paying 5 dollars will now land closer to 10. Google has been reworking the same controls elsewhere, including a beta that changes the value of single products.

Impression share in limited campaigns fell from 40% to 31%

Before the change, more than half of budget-limited campaigns beat their ROAS target. Among campaigns with spare budget, only 30% overdelivered and 57% landed on target. The old behaviour worked as a quiet discount for small budgets. It also meant the target on screen was not the target the system aimed at. Median impression share for limited campaigns has since dropped from 40% to 31%.

Optmyzr tells advertisers to reset targets to recent actuals

The tool maker Optmyzr advises a clear order of work. Check which campaigns are limited by budget. Decide whether the old gap between target and result was deliberate. If it was not, move the target to the recent actual number. Then wait one or two conversion cycles before judging anything. Joey Bidner, a freelance Google Ads manager, put it plainly: “I have never been more frustrated by a Google Ads update than this”. Other platforms are moving the other way, and Microsoft recently dropped its maximum CPC limit.

The arithmetic is worth doing before the next budget meeting. A click price 15.8% higher on the same daily budget buys roughly one click in seven fewer. For a campaign that used to beat its ROAS target on a small budget, that gap is what the change costs.