About bid strategy statuses

Your bid strategy status calls attention to the state of your automated bid strategy at any given point in time. When checking your campaign performance, it’s helpful to review the status of your automated bid strategies to be sure they’re running as expected and help resolve any issues, as needed. This article describes what each bid strategy status means.

 

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Before you begin

If you’re not using any automated bid strategies, review About automated bidding to determine if any of them are right for you. If you don’t know where to find your bid strategy status, learn how to Find your bid strategy status.

Bid strategy statuses

Inactive

The bid strategy isn't active. Here are some reasons why a bid strategy might be inactive:

• Campaigns are paused, or there are no campaigns attached to this bidding strategy.
• All keywords or ads using this strategy are paused.
• A prepaid budget has been spent.

Active

The bid strategy is active and setting bids to optimize performance. No changes are needed.

Learning

After you make a change to your bid strategy, there may be minor performance fluctuations as Google Ads optimizes your bids. To indicate this, a "Learning" status may be shown. You can hover over the status to show which of the following 4 reasons your bid strategy currently has a "Learning" status.

• New strategy: The bid strategy was recently created or reactivated. Google Ads is now adjusting to optimize your bids.
• Setting change: A setting for the bid strategy was changed. Google Ads is now adjusting to optimize your bids.
• Conversion action setting change: You’ve recently added or removed a conversion action related to one of your bid strategies, changed the "Include in ‘Conversions'" setting, or changed your conversion “Count" setting.
• Composition change: Campaigns, ad groups, or keywords have been added to or removed from the bid strategy. Google Ads is now adjusting to optimize your bids.

Next step

Continue using your account as usual, but be mindful that key metrics may vary during this time, so you may not want to measure performance until the learning period is over.

Limited

Your bid strategy is limited by one of the following 3 factors. You can hover over the status in the Status column to show which factor is limiting your bid strategy.

Inventory

Your bid strategies are limited by available search volume. Your ads are only eligible to show on a limited number of searches.

Next step

If your bid strategy is limited by inventory, you can expand your targeting by adding relevant keywords, Dynamic Search Ads, broad match keywords, or other forms of targeting

Bid limits

Maximum and/or minimum bid limits are preventing your bids from being fully optimized.

For example, 95% of spend is limited by your maximum bid limit. This means that for 95% of spend, your bid strategy would have set a higher bid but was prevented from doing so by the max bid limit.

Next step

If your bid strategy is not performing as well as you'd like, you may want to increase the maximum bid limit and/or decrease the minimum bid limit.

Budget constrained

Many of the keywords using this strategy are Limited by budget. As a result, Google Ads may not be able to raise bids enough to meet your goals.

Next step

Increase the budgets associated with this strategy. Learn how to optimize your average daily budget.

Misconfigured (Maximize bid strategy with shared budget)

Maximize clicks bidding, Maximize conversion bidding, and Maximize conversion value bidding are automated bid strategies that help maximize your performance (clicks, conversions, and conversion value) while spending the average daily budget. If these strategies share a budget with another bid strategy, your bid strategy status might show as misconfigured. To prevent this, all campaigns in the same shared budget should be utilizing the same portfolio bid strategy. Below is a list of where your misconfigured status might show up and what you can do to resolve each issue.

Standard (campaign-level) bid strategy is misconfigured

If your standard bid strategy shows as misconfigured, it means that campaign shares a budget with campaigns that aren't all on the same portfolio bid strategy. To fix this, remove the shared budget from the campaign, or add all campaigns in the shared budget to a single portfolio bid strategy.

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. Go to the bid strategy report. Learn how to Find your bid strategy reports.
3. Click Fix It.
4. Fix It will bring you to the Campaigns table and automatically filter to all the campaigns in your shared budget.
5. Select all your campaigns by checking the box at the top of the “Campaign column”.
6. Click Edit, then select “Change bid strategy”.
7. From the dropdown, add your campaigns to a single portfolio bid strategy by selecting either:
   • Maximize clicks
   • Maximize conversions
   • Maximize conversion value
8. Click Use a portfolio strategy, then select “Create new portfolio strategy”. Set a name and options based on the strategy you have selected.
9. Click Apply.

Note: There may be multiple shared budgets within a portfolio bid strategy, but all campaigns that have shared the same shared budget need to be using the same portfolio bid strategy. You can also choose to remove the shared budget from the campaign. Learn how to remove a shared budget.

Portfolio bid strategy is misconfigured

If your portfolio bid strategy shows as misconfigured, it means that your bid strategy shares budgets with campaigns using other bid strategies. You’ll need to remove those campaigns from their shared budgets, or add them to your portfolio bid strategy.

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. Go to the bid strategy report. Learn how to Find your bid strategy reports.
3. Click Fix It.
4. Fix It will bring you to the Campaign table and automatically filter to all campaigns in the shared budget.
5. Select all your campaigns by checking the box at the top of the “Campaign column”.
6. Click Edit, then select “Change bid strategy”.
7. From the dropdown, add your campaigns to a single portfolio bid strategy by selecting either:
   • Maximize clicks
   • Maximize conversions
   • Maximize conversion value
8. Click Use a portfolio strategy then select “Use existing portfolio strategy”. Select the original portfolio strategy that was marked "Misconfigured".
9. Click Apply.

Note: You can also choose to remove the shared budget from the campaign. Learn how to remove a shared budget.

Misconfigured (conversion setting)

Automated, conversion-based bid strategies—Target cost-per-action (CPA), Target return on ad spend (ROAS), or Maximize conversions—use your conversion history to optimize bids with precision on each and every auction. But if you don’t have the right conversion actions set up, it could impact the accuracy of your strategy’s automated bids, limiting your conversions.

Below are a few reasons that your conversion tracking settings might be limiting the performance of your bid strategies and what you can do to resolve each issue.

Note: If you use cross-account conversion tracking and you’re having any of these issues, they'll need to be resolved in the Google Ads manager account.

Missing app install conversion actions

Your bid strategy targets app installs, but you don’t have any conversion actions that your bid strategy can use.

Next steps

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to set up an app install conversion action for Android or iOS. If you already have mobile app conversion tracking set up, check the following settings to make sure your conversion data is available to your bid strategies:

Verify your conversion action is enabled

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. In the upper right corner of your account, click the tools icon , then under "Measurement," click Conversions.
3. Select your conversion action and check its status.
   • If your conversion action is enabled, it will be a green dot.
   • If your conversion action is removed, it will be a red X. To enable the conversion action, click Edit and choose Enable.

Verify the “Include in ‘Conversions’” setting is checked

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. In the upper right corner of your account, click the tools icon , then under "Measurement", click Conversions.
3. Click the name of your conversion action, and find the “Include in ‘Conversions’” column.
   • If “Include in ‘Conversions’” is marked “Yes”, then no change is necessary.
   • If “Include in ‘Conversions’” is marked “No”, then you’ll need to change the setting to “Yes”.

Learn more About the “Include in ‘Conversions’” setting.

Missing phone call conversion actions

Your bid strategy targets phone calls from ads, but you don’t have any conversion actions that your bid strategy can use.

Next steps

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to set up conversion tracking to Track calls from ads. If you’ve already set up conversion tracking to track calls from ads, check the following settings to make sure your conversion data is available to your bid strategies:

Verify your conversion action is enabled

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. In the upper right corner of your account, click the tools icon , then under "Measurement", click Conversions.
3. Select your conversion action and check its status.
   • If your conversion action is enabled, it will be a green dot.
   • If your conversion action is removed, it will be a red X. To enable the conversion action, click Edit and choose Enable.

Verify the “Include in ‘Conversions’” setting is checked

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. In the upper right corner of your account, click the tools icon , then under "Measurement", click Conversions.
3. Click the name of your conversion action, and find the “Include in ‘Conversions’” column.
   • If “Include in ‘Conversions’” is marked “Yes”, then no change is necessary.
   • If “Include in ‘Conversions’” is marked “No”, then you’ll need to change the setting to “Yes”.

Learn more About the “Include in ‘Conversions’” setting.

Missing website conversion actions

Your bid strategy targets conversions on your website, but you don’t have any conversion actions that your bid strategy can use.

Next steps

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to Set up conversion tracking for your website. If you already have conversion tracking set up for your website, check the following settings to make sure your conversion data is available to your bid strategies:

Verify your conversion action is enabled

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. In the upper right corner of your account, click the tools icon , then under "Measurement", click Conversions.
3. Select your conversion action and check its status.
   • If your conversion action is enabled, it will be a green dot.
   • If your conversion action is removed, it will be a red X. To enable the conversion action, click Edit and choose Enable.

Verify the “Include in ‘Conversions’” setting is checked

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. In the upper right corner of your account, click the tools icon , then under "Measurement", click Conversions.
3. Click the name of your conversion action, and find the “Include in ‘Conversions’” column.
   • If “Include in ‘Conversions’” is marked “Yes”, then no change is necessary.
   • If “Include in ‘Conversions’” is marked “No”, then you’ll need to change the setting to “Yes”.

Learn more About the “Include in ‘Conversions’” setting.

Related links

• Find your bid strategy status
• Create a portfolio bid strategy
• About automated bidding