Bidding Strategies

Enhanced CPC vs Maximize Conversions: The Direct Upgrade Path

In short: Enhanced CPC nudged your manual bid at auction time by predicted conversion likelihood, and has been wound down for Search and Display. Maximize Conversions does the same job without your bid as an input: it prices every auction from conversion signals and spends the full budget. This is the intended migration, not a lateral move.

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 Conversions

Automated Google strategy that spends the full daily budget chasing the highest conversion count, with an optional target CPA to constrain cost.

Bids are computed at auction time from signals Google holds, and the budget becomes the real control lever because the strategy is built to spend it. Add a target CPA once conversion data is steady and you want cost discipline. The recurring mistake is switching to it while conversion tracking is broken or counting the wrong action, which trains the system to buy more of something worthless.

Full definition

Side by side.

The differences that actually change what happens in your account.

 Enhanced CPCMaximize Conversions
Status todayRetired on Search and Display; those campaigns run Manual CPC now.Live, and the standard successor.
Bid constructionYour max CPC multiplied by a conversion likelihood adjustment.Built from scratch per auction, ignoring any stored keyword bid.
Signal accessConversion likelihood only, applied as a scaling factor.Device, location, time, query, audience and more, weighed together.
Spend behaviorBounded by your base bids, so underspending was common.Designed to consume the daily budget.
Cost constraintThe base bid.An optional target CPA field.
Inherited errorBad manual bids stayed bad, just scaled.No dependency on your bids; the dependency moves to your conversion data.

What actually separates them.

01

eCPC could only scale the bid you supplied, so a keyword priced wrong stayed priced wrong; Maximize Conversions sets the whole number.

02

eCPC left your budget largely uncommitted when base bids were conservative, while Maximize Conversions treats the budget as the target to spend.

03

Adding a target CPA is possible only on Maximize Conversions, which is why cost discipline under eCPC always meant editing bids by hand.

04

Maximize Conversions weighs many auction-time signals, where eCPC's public behavior was a single conversion likelihood adjustment on top of your number.

05

Since eCPC required conversion tracking to do anything, accounts with broken tracking were effectively on Manual CPC the entire time they ran it.

Which one should you use?

Use Enhanced CPC when

  • Interpreting performance data from the period before migration.
  • Auditing a strategy document or dashboard that still specifies eCPC.
  • Explaining to a stakeholder why a campaign's bidding label changed without anyone touching it.
  • There is no live configuration decision; the setting is gone.

Use Maximize Conversions when

  • Conversion tracking is verified and conversions arrive on a steady rhythm.
  • You want auction-time bidding without maintaining a keyword bid table.
  • The budget, rather than the bid, is the control you want to manage with.
  • You plan to add a target CPA once the campaign settles.

Common questions.

Will moving from eCPC to Maximize Conversions increase my CPC?

Usually yes, because the strategy is no longer anchored to your base bid and will pay what an auction it likes actually costs. It also spends the full budget rather than whatever your bids happened to buy. Judge the change on conversions and cost per conversion across a full conversion window, since CPC alone will read as a regression.

Should I add a target CPA immediately when migrating?

Usually not on day one. Let the campaign run unconstrained long enough to see what CPA it naturally lands at with the budget it now spends, then set a target near that number and tighten in increments. Setting a target derived from eCPC era data can be misleading, because eCPC campaigns often bought a smaller and cheaper slice of the auction.

My campaign still says Enhanced CPC in reporting. What is actually running?

Manual CPC. Google removed the auction-time adjustment for Search and Display and moved those campaigns over, but labels lag in exports and third-party tools. The number entering the auction is now exactly what you set, with no conversion likelihood multiplier, so any period spanning the wind-down needs care when compared.

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