Maximize Conversion Value: Your Standard Shopping Migration Plan

Google quietly closed one of the biggest gaps between Standard Shopping and Performance Max. On June 26, Search Engine Land reported that Maximize Conversion Value bidding is now available inside Standard Shopping without requiring a Target ROAS. The Performance Max workaround is now optional. You can keep the control of Standard Shopping and still let Maximize Conversion Value chase revenue. This post walks your agency through the migration plan to use Maximize Conversion Value the right way, in one week.

The change is quiet. It was first spotted by performance marketer Yash Mandlesha on LinkedIn, then written up by Anu Adegbola at Search Engine Land. Most advertisers will keep running the same Target ROAS or Maximize Clicks setup they have used for years. The shops that move fast on Maximize Conversion Value will pick up the spread.

What Maximize Conversion Value Actually Does Now

Maximize Conversion Value is a Smart Bidding strategy that tries to extract as much revenue as it can from your daily budget. Before this rollout, you could only use Maximize Conversion Value inside Standard Shopping if you attached a Target ROAS. That forced new accounts to guess a ROAS target before they had any data to back it up.

The new version drops the Target ROAS requirement. You set Maximize Conversion Value as the bidding strategy, you set the daily budget, and Google decides how to spread it across product groups, queries, and devices to pull in the most revenue. The control you keep is the campaign type. You still get Standard Shopping reporting, product group structure, negative keywords, and search term data.

If you want a primer on value-based bidding in general, our value-based bidding for lead generation guide walks through the data setup that has to be in place first. Maximize Conversion Value will not save you if your conversion values are wrong. Garbage values in equal garbage spend out.

Why the Maximize Conversion Value Update Matters for Agencies

Most agency clients with a Shopping feed have one of three structures right now. Feed-only Performance Max so they can use Maximize Conversion Value without a ROAS lock. Standard Shopping on Maximize Clicks because Target ROAS felt too tight. Or Standard Shopping on Target ROAS that has been throttled for months. All three are migration candidates.

The feed-only Performance Max accounts are the loudest opportunity. Many clients built that campaign only so they could get Maximize Conversion Value while skipping the asset group. They never wanted the channel mixing or the missing search term data. The new Standard Shopping option gives them value-based bidding without the workaround.

Standard Shopping on Maximize Clicks is the second target. Clicks bidding is fine when you are buying data, but once you have 30 conversions in the last 30 days, you are paying for click volume instead of revenue. Switching to Maximize Conversion Value tends to lift revenue per dollar inside the same budget.

The third group, throttled Target ROAS, is the trickiest. Those clients chose a ROAS the campaign cannot hit at the current budget, and the bidder holds back impressions. Moving them to Maximize Conversion Value without a target lets the campaign breathe and learn before you reintroduce a Target ROAS later.

The Seven-Day Migration Plan

Here is the rollout sequence we are running with Elevarus clients this week. It assumes value-based conversions already fire into Google Ads. If not, fix that first. Maximize Conversion Value depends on accurate values, and if your feed is sending zeros or estimates you do not trust, the Maximize Conversion Value bidder will chase the wrong baskets.

Day one is the audit. Pull every Shopping campaign, list the current bidding strategy, the last 30 day conversions and conversion value, the spend, and the realized ROAS. Flag any campaign with 30+ conversions in the last 30 days as a Maximize Conversion Value candidate. Anything below 30 stays on Maximize Clicks for now, because the bidder needs volume to learn.

Day two is feed integrity. Pull the Merchant Center diagnostics report. Any disapproval, any GTIN error, any out-of-stock product still active. Fix those first. Maximize Conversion Value will not perform on a feed full of holes. While you are there, confirm conversion values flow as dynamic values from the purchase event. Static values, average order proxies, and missing currency tags must be fixed before the migration.

Day three is conversion review. In Google Ads, open Goals then Conversions. Confirm your primary conversion action passes a value and that the import lag is reasonable. If you import offline conversions, the bidder needs two full cycles of upload history before migration. We covered the data quality side in our July 2026 Google Ads terms reclassification post.

Day four is the migration. In each candidate Standard Shopping campaign, change the bidding strategy to Maximize Conversion Value with no Target ROAS. Save. Document the change with the date and the trailing 30 day spend and revenue baseline. Do not change anything else the same day. One variable at a time.

Day five is the watch window. Smart Bidding learning takes seven to fourteen days. Do not panic if revenue dips on day two or three. Do not push a Target ROAS in week one. Do not adjust budget by more than 20% during learning. Change too many things at once and you will not know which one moved the Maximize Conversion Value result.

Day six is the placement check. If the migrated campaign was previously a feed-only Performance Max, do a placement review on the inventory the new Standard Shopping campaign now serves. Our Google Ads placements exclusion audit covers the workflow, especially if Performance Max was previously mixing display and YouTube placements into your shopping budget.

Day seven is the client review. Build a one-page summary that shows the prior bidding strategy, the new Maximize Conversion Value setup, the seven-day spend and revenue snapshot, and the next checkpoint at day fourteen. The bidder is still learning. The client cares about revenue. Show revenue with context.

When Not to Migrate to Maximize Conversion Value

Not every account is a fit. If a client has fewer than 30 conversions in the last 30 days, the bidder will not have enough data to make Maximize Conversion Value useful. Keep them on Maximize Clicks and revisit in 30 to 60 days.

If a single hero product drives 80% of revenue, Maximize Conversion Value can over-concentrate budget on that product and starve the long tail. Target ROAS at a value the campaign can actually hit may serve you better, because the constraint forces the bidder to spread bids.

If the client runs heavy promotional cycles, like a quarterly sale that doubles conversion value for two weeks, Maximize Conversion Value will read the sale as a permanent signal and over-bid on the back end. Use seasonal adjustments to flag the sale window, or keep a manual cap until the promotional pattern stabilizes.

One more guardrail. If your conversion data retention has been short, the bidder will not have enough history to learn well. Google Ads now retains conversion data for 37 months, but some accounts have older imports that fall outside that window. Read our 37-month data retention backup playbook before you migrate so you have a clean backup of the prior history.

The Reporting Frame for Maximize Conversion Value Clients

Your client will ask one question. Is this making us more money. The honest answer takes three numbers and a context. Show conversion value, return on ad spend, and the share of total revenue coming from Shopping. Then show the same three numbers from the trailing 30 days as the baseline. Then show the trailing seven days since the migration as the early signal. Do not promise a result on day three. Promise a clear picture on day fourteen.

This is the same reporting frame we use for any Smart Bidding migration. The bidding strategy is one input. The feed, the values, the budget, the seasonality, and the policy environment all matter. Our Reddit Shopify integration playbook shows the same frame applied to a different channel, if your client also runs that test.

If consent or GA4 changes have already disrupted your client’s data, layer a note into the report. Our GA4 ad_storage consent operator playbook covers why revenue reporting has been noisy since June 15. Do not let your client confuse a consent shift with a Maximize Conversion Value result. The two are independent.

The policy backdrop matters too. Google Ads now reviews creative and policy assets in near real time. If your migration coincides with a creative refresh, you may see asset disapprovals slow the bidder during learning. Our real-time policy reviews playbook covers the diligence step you want to run before you ship the new bidding strategy.

What to Do This Week

Three actions for Monday. One, build the candidate list. Pull every client Shopping account, list each Standard Shopping campaign with 30 or more conversions in the last 30 days, and rank by spend. Two, audit each one for feed integrity, conversion value accuracy, and import lag before you touch the bidding strategy. Three, schedule a 15 minute call with each client in the queue to set expectations on the seven-day learning window and the day fourteen review.

If your shop also runs local services for the same clients, walk through the wider auction picture in the same call. Our Google Business Ads versus LSA versus Search comparison shows how the same Maximize Conversion Value logic applies, or does not, across the local stack. Clients running both ecommerce and lead generation often want a single bidding philosophy.

The Search Engine Land write-up is the primary source for the Maximize Conversion Value rollout, and the new dropdown spotting is summarized at PPC News Feed. If you want to walk through your migration plan together, schedule a session through our free consultation page. Let’s Grow!