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.

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.

Note: Bid strategy statuses are not available for Hotel campaigns.

Find your bid strategy status

How to find your portfolio bid strategy status

  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon Tools Icon.
  2. Click the Budgets and bidding drop down in the section menu.
  3. Click Bid strategies.
  4. The “Status” column shows the status of your portfolio bid strategy.
  5. Hover over the text to learn more about the status. To learn more, read about bid strategy statuses.

How to find your standard or portfolio bid strategy status

  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon Tools Icon.
  2. Click the Budgets and bidding drop down in the section menu.
  3. Click Bid strategies.
  4. Hover over the text in the “Status” column and click View bid strategy report.
The “Bid strategy type” column shows the bid strategy of the campaign, even if it’s not a portfolio bid strategy. If you do not see the “Bid strategy type” column and would like to, you can enable it by clicking on the columns icon A picture of the Google Ads columns icon above the table, clicking “Modify columns,” and selecting "Bid strategy type" under the “Attributes” category.

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.
  • 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.

Learn moreAbout the learning period for campaigns and what affects it

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 4 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.

Bidding strategy

Limited by bidding strategy - Applicable to campaigns only.

Your bid strategy is currently limited. You can bid more efficiently to get more conversions or conversion value and optimize towards your conversion goals by using a fully automated bid strategy.

Next step

If your bid strategy is limited, consider upgrading your bidding strategy to use a fully automated bidding strategy, to get more conversions at a similar CPA or more conversion value at a similar ROAS. Google Ads will provide a custom recommendation for your campaign directly in the “Status” column of your Campaigns.

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. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon Campaigns Icon.
  2. Click the Campaigns drop down menu, then click Campaigns.
  3. Go to the bid strategy report. Learn how to Find your bid strategy reports.
  4. Click Fix It.
  5. Fix It will bring you to the Campaigns table and filter to all the campaigns in your shared budget.
  6. Select all your campaigns by checking the box at the top of the “Campaign column”.
  7. Click Edit, then select “Change bid strategy”.
  8. From the dropdown, add your campaigns to a single portfolio bid strategy by selecting either:
    • Maximize clicks
    • Maximize conversions
    • Maximize conversion value
  9. Click Use a portfolio strategy, then select “Create new portfolio strategy”. Set a name and options based on the strategy you have selected.
  10. 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. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon Campaigns Icon.
  2. Click the Campaigns drop down menu, then click Campaigns.
  3. Go to the bid strategy report. Learn how to Find your bid strategy reports.
  4. Click Fix It.
  5. Fix It will bring you to the Campaign table and filter to all campaigns in the shared budget.
  6. Select all your campaigns by checking the box at the top of the “Campaign column”.
  7. Click Edit, then select “Change bid strategy”.
  8. From the dropdown, add your campaigns to a single portfolio bid strategy by selecting either:
  9. Maximize clicks
  10. Maximize conversions
  11. Maximize conversion value
  12. Click Use a portfolio strategy then select “Use existing portfolio strategy”. Select the original portfolio strategy that was marked "Misconfigured".
  13. 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. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon Goals Icon.
  2. Click the Conversions drop down menu, then click Summary.
  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. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon Goals Icon.
  2. Click the Conversions drop down menu, then click Summary.
  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. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon Goals Icon.
  2. Click the Conversions drop down menu, then click Summary.
  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. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon Goals Icon.
  2. Click the Conversions drop down menu, then click Summary.
  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. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon Goals Icon.
  2. Click the Conversions drop down menu, then click Summary.
  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. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon Goals Icon.
  2. Click the Conversions drop down menu, then click Summary.
  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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