Google Ads Bid Suppression Is Over And Budget-Limited Campaigns Are Paying More

Back in August, Google changed how target-based bidding works inside campaigns that are limited by budget. The advertiser data is finally in, and it points to one thing. If your Google Ads campaigns are capped by budget, you are almost certainly paying more per click than you were in July. Here is what changed, what the numbers show, and what to check in your account.

What Google Actually Changed On August 17

Google updated its help documentation to confirm the rollout. The wording is short and easy to miss.

"On August 17, 2026, changes to target-based bid strategies rolled out globally across your campaigns that are 'Limited by budget.'"

That covers Search, Shopping, Performance Max, and Demand Gen campaigns running target-based strategies like Target CPA and Target ROAS. The rollout started on August 17 and finished on August 27.

The practical change is that budget-limited campaigns now perform more consistently toward the target you set. Before this, a capped campaign could quietly overshoot its target and deliver better than you asked for. That behavior is what went away.

What The Data Shows

Mike Ryan from Smarter Ecommerce posted an analysis on X on September 15. His read on it was direct.

"CPCs are rising for budgeted-limited campaigns, and a sizable pool of cheap clicks have been liquidated."

Two things happened at once. Budget-limited campaigns saw their cost per click go up, and a pool of cheap clicks those campaigns had been quietly absorbing got released back into the auction for everybody else.

Kirk Williams looked at the same change and came away thinking the overall system got better, particularly for advertisers who are not limited by budget. That tells you who won and who lost here.

• If you are limited by budget. Your CPCs went up and your impression share position likely shifted. You are the one paying for this.
• If you are not limited by budget. A pool of cheap clicks just became available to you that was not there in July.
• If you use Performance Planner. Forecasting models stabilized once the global rollout completed on August 27, so numbers from before that date are not a clean comparison.

Why This Caught So Many People Off Guard

One of the biggest mistakes I see is assuming that a change in your numbers means somebody changed something in your account. Nothing in your account changed here. Your bids are the same, your targets are the same, your budgets are the same, and your cost per click went up anyway.

That is what makes this type of update frustrating. There is no alert. You find it later when you are pulling a month-over-month report and trying to explain to somebody why efficiency slipped.

Keep in mind, Google was explicit that it is not fixing this for you. The help documentation says Google does not automatically adjust your bidding targets or your budgets. That part is on you.

What To Check In Your Account

Google's own guidance is to "review your settings and ensure they align with your business goals, especially if your 'Limited by budget' campaigns historically performed better than your targets."

That is the tell. If a campaign was beating its target while capped by budget, that campaign is the one that changed. Here is the process.

1. Find every campaign flagged "Limited by budget." Sort by status and pull the list. These are the only campaigns affected.
2. Compare July against September. Skip the August 17 to August 27 window entirely. That is rollout noise, not a result.
3. Look at CPC and conversion volume together. A higher CPC on its own is not a problem. A higher CPC with fewer conversions is.
4. Check whether your target was ever realistic. If a campaign was overdelivering against a soft target for months, the target was too easy. Reset it to what you actually need.
5. Decide between budget and target. You can raise the budget so the campaign is no longer capped, or you can tighten the target so the campaign buys less expensive traffic. Pick one deliberately.

Start with the campaigns carrying the most spend and work down. If you are not sure your targets are set correctly in the first place, review how the different bidding strategies actually behave before you start changing numbers. Getting the strategy wrong costs more than getting the target wrong.

The Budget Question Nobody Wants To Answer

There is a harder conversation underneath this update. A campaign that sits at "Limited by budget" for months is telling you something. Either it is worth more money than you are giving it, or it is not worth running at the scale you want.

Most advertisers never resolve that. They leave the campaign capped, accept whatever performance falls out, and move on. This update takes away the free upside that situation used to deliver.

If you have campaigns that have been capped since spring, look at how your budget pacing is set up and decide whether those caps still make sense. At the very least, you want to know which campaigns are held back on purpose and which ones are held back because nobody revisited the number.

Question to Answer:

Which of your campaigns are currently flagged "Limited by budget," and were any of them beating their target before August 17?

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