Bidding Strategies

Enhanced CPC vs Maximize Clicks: A Retired Option and a Live One

In short: Enhanced CPC scaled your manual bid at auction time by conversion likelihood and has been wound down for Search and Display. Maximize Clicks discards bids entirely and spends the budget on the cheapest clicks it can find. They pulled in opposite directions: eCPC chased conversion probability, Maximize Clicks chases volume.

By the AdFlint research team · Fact-checked against current Google and Meta platform behavior · Last reviewed July 2026

Enhanced CPC

Legacy Google setting that raised or lowered manual bids at auction time based on conversion likelihood, now retired for Search and Display.

eCPC sat between manual and fully automated bidding, nudging your max CPC on each auction. Google wound it down and moved Search and Display campaigns onto Manual CPC, so campaigns still labeled eCPC in older exports no longer receive the adjustment. If a strategy document still references it, the current equivalent is Maximize Conversions with or without a target CPA, not a manual bid with a multiplier.

Full definition

Maximize Clicks

Automated Google strategy that spends the available budget to buy as many clicks as possible, optionally bounded by a maximum CPC limit.

Google buys the cheapest clicks it can find within your budget, which is why it drifts toward wide, low-intent queries when match types are loose. It is genuinely useful on new campaigns with no conversion history, for traffic goals, and as a temporary way to gather data. Always set the max CPC limit; without one, the strategy will pay whatever a single expensive term happens to cost.

Full definition

Side by side.

The differences that actually change what happens in your account.

 Enhanced CPCMaximize Clicks
Status todayRetired on Search and Display; campaigns moved to Manual CPC.Live and selectable.
Bid basisYour max CPC, scaled by predicted conversion likelihood.Whatever buys the most clicks inside the budget.
Conversion trackingRequired, or the multiplier did nothing.Not used at all.
Budget behaviorSpend followed your bids, not the budget.Built to spend the full daily budget.
GuardrailYour base bid, adjusted upward or downward by Google.An optional max CPC limit, which should always be set.
Replacement pathMaximize Conversions, with or without a target CPA.No replacement needed.

What actually separates them.

01

eCPC never set a bid from scratch, it scaled yours, so it inherited whatever pricing error was already in your manual bids.

02

Maximize Clicks ignores conversion data completely, while eCPC could not function without it.

03

Maximize Clicks is designed to spend the budget, whereas eCPC campaigns often underspent because the base bids were too low.

04

The behavior people wanted from eCPC, auction-time conversion intelligence, now lives in Maximize Conversions rather than in any click based strategy.

05

A campaign still labeled eCPC in an export is running plain Manual CPC today, which is a different comparison from Maximize Clicks entirely.

Which one should you use?

Use Enhanced CPC when

  • Reading historical performance from before the wind-down and needing to know what bidding was doing.
  • Auditing an old media plan or agency deck that still names eCPC.
  • Reconciling third-party dashboards that carry stale strategy labels.
  • There is nothing to configure today; it is not a live choice.

Use Maximize Clicks when

  • New campaigns with no conversion history where traffic has to come first.
  • The objective is genuinely visits, such as a content launch or comparison page.
  • You need search term volume fast to build negatives before automating.
  • Conversion tracking is not installed or not yet verified.

Common questions.

If my eCPC campaign was migrated, should I move it to Maximize Clicks?

Only if the goal is traffic. eCPC was a conversion oriented setting, so the closer successor is Maximize Conversions, which uses conversion likelihood at auction time exactly as eCPC's multiplier tried to. Moving a converting campaign to Maximize Clicks trades outcome buying for volume buying, which usually shows up as more clicks and fewer leads.

Did eCPC and Maximize Clicks ever overlap?

No. They were mutually exclusive campaign settings. eCPC sat on top of Manual CPC and adjusted your bid, while Maximize Clicks replaced bidding altogether. Accounts that wanted both behaviors, cheap volume and conversion weighting, ended up splitting traffic across campaigns rather than combining strategies inside one.

Why does my old report show eCPC delivering fewer clicks than Maximize Clicks?

Because the two answered different questions. eCPC spent only up to what your keyword bids allowed and biased toward auctions predicted to convert, which are typically the more expensive ones. Maximize Clicks spends the full budget on the cheapest inventory available, so a click count comparison flatters it by construction.

Or stop choosing between them.

AdFlint picks the setting, writes the ads, and keeps optimizing inside the Google and Meta accounts you already own.

Try AdFlint freeSee how it works

Related comparisons

All comparisons