Bidding Strategies

Maximize Conversion Value vs Manual CPC: Bidding on Revenue

In short: Manual CPC prices a click once and never revisits it. Maximize Conversion Value prices each auction by the revenue it predicts, so it will pay far more for a click it expects to produce a large order. It only works if you pass genuinely different conversion values, which manual bidding never needed.

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

Manual CPC

You set the maximum you will pay per click at keyword or ad group level, with no automated adjustment at auction time.

Bids stay where you put them until you change them, which makes spend and position predictable but blind to auction-time signals like device, time of day, and audience. It suits tiny budgets, brand terms, and diagnostic periods when you want to isolate one variable. The mistake is staying manual on a converting account long enough that competitors bidding at auction time take the cheap inventory you cannot see.

Full definition

Maximize Conversion Value

Automated Google strategy that pursues the highest total conversion value within the budget, with an optional target ROAS to constrain efficiency.

It needs genuinely different values passed with your conversions, otherwise every conversion looks identical and it degenerates into Maximize Conversions. Ecommerce accounts and lead-gen accounts with scored leads use it to push toward high-value orders rather than cheap ones. The usual failure is a hard-coded value on the conversion action, which makes the value model meaningless while reports still display a confident ROAS figure.

Full definition

Side by side.

The differences that actually change what happens in your account.

 Manual CPCMaximize Conversion Value
Optimizes forNothing beyond the bid you entered.Total conversion value within the budget.
Data requirementNone.Accurate, varied conversion values sent with each conversion.
How bids varyThey do not, unless you edit them.Per auction, by predicted order size.
Efficiency guardrailThe bid amount.An optional target ROAS field.
Typical accountSmall, tightly held keyword sets and brand terms.Ecommerce with varied basket sizes, or lead gen with scored values.
Failure modeBids stale against a moving auction.One hard-coded value on the conversion action, making the ROAS report meaningless.

What actually separates them.

01

Manual CPC treats every click on a keyword as worth the same amount; value bidding assumes clicks on the same keyword are worth wildly different amounts and prices them separately.

02

Maximize Conversion Value requires a value stream in your conversion tracking, which is a tracking project rather than a bid strategy change.

03

If every conversion carries the same hard-coded value, the strategy collapses into Maximize Conversions and the reported ROAS becomes a restatement of conversion count.

04

Manual CPC keeps cost per click flat and predictable; value bidding deliberately lets CPC vary, which makes CPC a useless health metric after the switch.

05

Target ROAS is a field inside Maximize Conversion Value, not a separate strategy, so you choose value bidding first and add the constraint after.

Which one should you use?

Use Manual CPC when

  • No revenue figure is available at conversion time, and none is coming soon.
  • The campaign converts too rarely for a value model to learn anything.
  • You need spend to stay flat and legible during a test.
  • Brand terms where you already know the click is worth buying at a fixed price.

Use Maximize Conversion Value when

  • Purchases send real transaction values back through your conversion tracking.
  • Order values or margins differ enough that a conversion count hides the important variation.
  • You are willing to be judged on revenue and return rather than on cost per lead.
  • Offline conversion imports carry scored lead values or closed deal amounts.

Common questions.

Can I use Maximize Conversion Value for lead generation?

Yes, but only if the leads carry different values. That means scoring them, whether by form fields at submission or by importing closed deal amounts later through offline conversions. Sending the same value on every lead gives the model nothing to distinguish, and you end up with Maximize Conversions plus a percentage that looks more informative than it is.

Why did my cost per conversion get worse after switching from Manual CPC?

Value bidding is allowed to spend more per conversion when it expects a larger order. A rising cost per conversion beside rising total value is the strategy doing its job. The check that matters is conversion value against spend across a full conversion window, since revenue keeps landing after the clicks that produced it.

Do I need to fix conversion values before switching, or can I do it after?

Before. The model starts learning from whatever it receives on day one, so switching first and correcting values later means training on wrong data and then asking the model to unlearn it. Verify that real transaction values arrive, that currency is right, and that duplicate or test conversions are excluded first.

Or stop choosing between them.

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

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