About bid strategy statuses

Your bid strategy status tells you whether your automated bid strategies are active or not, and why they might be limited. When checking your campaign statistics, it’s helpful to review the status of your automated bid strategies to be sure they’re running as expected and help you resolve any issues, as needed. This article describes what each bid strategy status means.

Before you begin

If you’re not using any automated bid strategies, read About automated bidding to see 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:

  • There are no campaigns, ad groups, or keywords attached to this 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, it takes time for Google Ads to gather the performance data it needs to optimize your bids. You can hover over the status to see which of the following 6 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 setting change

You’ve recently set up or updated conversion tracking.

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 steps

  • Wait for Google Ads to learn your new strategy. Changing bid strategy settings often may prolong the learning period or prevent Google Ads from accurately adjusting bids to meet your goals.
  • 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 5 factors. You can hover over the status to see which factor is limiting your bid strategy.

Bid limits

Maximum and/or minimum bid limits are being met by multiple keywords. As a result, your bids may not be fully optimized.

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.

Not enough data

Google Ads could optimize your bids more effectively with more conversion data.

Next steps

  • Make sure conversion tracking and reporting is working properly. If you import offline conversions, make sure you have imported your recent conversions into Google Ads.
  • If conversion tracking is working properly, you may be able to get more conversions by increasing traffic to the site associated with the strategy.

Learn how to increase traffic to your website.

Low priority spend

The target spend for this bid strategy cannot be met. The budgets associated with this strategy may be depleted by other bid strategies or manual keyword bids.

Next steps

  • Increase the budgets associated with this strategy or lower your target spend.
  • You can also remove your target spend entirely. Google Ads will automatically adjust your spend to work with the remaining budget.

Learn how to avoid a depleted daily budget.

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 steps

  • Increase the budgets associated with this strategy.
  • You can also change the strategy settings to allow bids to be raised when budget constrained. However, this is not recommended, as it can sometimes make the bid strategy less effective.

Learn how to avoid a depleted daily budget.

Low Quality Score

Many of the keywords associated with this bid strategy have a low Quality Score. As a result, your ads may not be displayed often enough to meet your goals.

Next steps

  • Remove low quality keywords associated with this strategy.
  • You can also change the strategy settings to allow bids to be raised for low quality keywords. However, this is not recommended. Getting low quality keywords to rank highly in an auction can be expensive, and you still might not meet your goals.

Misconfigured (conversion setting)

Automated, conversion-based bid strategies--Target cost-per-action (CPA), Target return on ad spend (ROAS), or Maximize conversions, or Enhanced cost-per-click (ECPC) with Search and Shopping campaigns -- 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.

Conversion tracking missing

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

Note: If you use cross-account conversion tracking and you’re having this issue, it'll need to be resolved in the Google Ads manager account.

Next steps

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to set up conversion tracking.

If you already have conversion tracking set up, then 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. Find your conversion action in the list that appears, and select it. Check the status icon.
    • 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 app install conversion actions

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

Note: If you use cross-account conversion tracking and you’re having this issue, it'll need to be resolved in the Google Ads manager account.

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, then 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.

Note: If you use cross-account conversion tracking and you’re having this issue, it'll need to be resolved in the Google Ads manager account.

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, then 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.

Note: If you use cross-account conversion tracking and you’re having this issue, it'll need to be resolved in the Google Ads manager account.

Next steps

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to set up conversions for your website.

If you already have conversion tracking set up for your website, then 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

 

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