A Google Ads advertiser told the r/PPC community that Shopping sales fell and competitors climbed above their listings after August 17, the date Google began steering budget-limited Target ROAS campaigns toward their stated goals, and a thread shown as one day old on October 5, 2026 has drawn dozens of replies arguing over whether the old results can be rebuilt.

In Short

A Google Ads advertiser told other marketers on Reddit that online store sales dropped after Google changed, on August 17, how some campaigns with capped daily budgets place bids. The change affects advertisers who set a return target and regularly run out of daily budget, and replies in the thread suggest that a very low target no longer lets such a campaign earn many times more than it promised. In practice, a campaign that promised about 3 units of sales per unit spent and used to deliver 30 to 40 is now steered toward delivering closer to 3, which commenters say can mean pricier clicks and a smaller return.

What the advertiser reported

The post, titled "August 17 DESTROYED our Google Shopping performance!!!!" and filed under the Google Ads flair, came from a user with the handle NorskBavian. According to the post, the account ran Shopping with a 300% target return on ad spend (tROAS) while the campaign actually delivered 3,000-4,000% ROAS. A 300% target means 3 units of conversion value per unit of spend; 4,000% means 40. The poster described the gap as roughly tenfold or more, and attributed the strong Shopping rankings and high volume to the low target, which in the poster's reading let Google bid aggressively while actual returns stayed far above the goal.

After August 17, according to the post, sales dropped significantly, rankings worsened, and competitors that the account had previously outranked began to appear above it. A Google representative suggested moving the target closer to the 3,000-4,000% the campaign was actually achieving. The poster did not test that, reasoning that a 4,000% target would make Google more conservative, reduce auction participation and cut volume. Instead the account tried Maximize Conversion Value with no target, which the poster found insufficiently aggressive, and then Maximize Conversions segmented more heavily by product margin. That setup looked more aggressive, according to the post, but cost per click and Shopping visibility remained below pre-August 17 levels.

The questions that followed were specific. Could a return to 300% work if the budget were raised until the campaign stopped being limited by budget? Had target-based bidding changed so fundamentally that the old arrangement could not be recreated? And if so, what were others running instead? The stated aim was not to hold 4,000%, but to "recreate the aggressive bidding, Shopping visibility and volume" that had produced it.

Several things are missing from the post. It does not name a vertical, a spend level or a margin structure, and it does not say whether the campaigns were standard Shopping or Performance Max. No screenshots accompany it. The account of cause and effect rests on a single advertiser's observation, which commenters then interpreted in different ways.

What Google's change does

The August 17 change did not arrive unannounced. Google disclosed it on June 15, 2026, as one part of a three-part package alongside a Smart Bidding Exploration expansion and a promotion mode beta. The rollout began on August 17 and was set to continue over several weeks rather than land at once.

The scope is narrower than the label suggests. Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen and Travel campaignsare affected when they carry a "Limited by budget" status and use Target CPA or Target ROAS bidding. App, video reach and video view campaigns sit outside it. Before the change, a campaign that exhausted its daily budget could keep delivering better than its target, and that surplus was a by-product of how the system spent a constrained budget. After it, Google's documentation says such campaigns will perform more consistently toward the stated target, including when budgets change. Google's stated reasoning was that overperformance made results unpredictable whenever an advertiser raised a budget.

PPC Land's coverage gave the cost-side arithmetic with a Target CPA example: a campaign with a $10 target that had been converting at $5 would drift toward $10, buying more expensive conversions with the same money. Target ROAS runs in the opposite direction, so a campaign returning more than its target is allowed to fall back toward it. Applied to the thread, a 300% target sitting beneath a 3,000-4,000% result represents a far larger gap than the 2-to-1 illustration, which is part of why the poster's numbers drew attention.

Google's Ads liaison, Ginny Marvin, also drew boundaries in July. In a comment thread covered by PPC Land, she said that campaigns not limited by budget are unaffected, that the update alone does not change spend, and that an advertiser who lowers a target to match current average delivery while leaving the budget alone would see the campaign keep performing as it does now. That last point resembles the suggestion the poster's representative made. An August 12 podcast interview added that ad group level targets fall inside the change. A Bid Target Adjustment Tool had appeared in Google Ads on July 6.

How the thread explained it

The budget-cap reading

The most detailed explanation came from a user named Middle-Economics1508. According to that reply, the 3,000-4,000% figure came from the budget limit, not from the 300% target: a budget-limited campaign had spent its money on the cheapest, highest-return auctions and so behaved as if it had a very high target. Since August 17, the commenter wrote, it aims for the target actually set, spends the same budget on costlier auctions and runs dry earlier in the day, which is when competitors appear above it. The commenter said this matched what they had seen in several accounts since August. The poster confirmed the campaign had shown "Limited by budget" before the change.

Others reached the same place from different directions. A user called shansbeats wrote that a low tROAS lets Google pay higher cost per click, and that raising the target makes bidding more conservative. Aggressive_Monk_1593 put it more bluntly: "budget limited + low target was basically a hack that google patched out". QuantumWolf99 described the budget cap as doing the heavy lifting, with Smart Bidding rationing spend into the cheapest high-value auctions, and elfaropm wrote that the cap had been doing half the work.

One observation sits awkwardly with the story. The poster reported worse rankings, while a lower effective bid target would ordinarily imply more aggressive bidding. The commenters' reconciliation is timing: higher costs per click exhaust the daily budget sooner, leaving later hours uncovered. The thread offers no impression data to confirm it.

Whether uncapping the budget restores the old results

The poster asked directly about holding 300% and raising the budget until the limited badge disappeared. Replies leaned against the idea. Only_Entertainment88 said the outcome was more likely to settle near 300% and summarized the update as meaning "what you ask is what you get". Middle-Economics1508 agreed that without the cap nothing keeps the campaign on cheap auctions, so spend would rise considerably, volume could improve, and ROAS would land near the target. QuantumWolf99 wrote that a 300% target with open budget chases every auction that clears 300%, so spend expands and blended ROAS slides toward that number. BuffaloFree6519 was more open to it, describing a week-long test as worthwhile.

Experience reports were mixed. A user posting as abc_123_anyname, whose account had kept a 415% target, wrote that after the change the campaign went hard limited by budget; a budget increase of roughly 40% with no change to the target produced higher spend, cost per click and impressions, but about half the typical conversions, and the search term report showed unusual queries. The commenter planned to cut the budget and raise the target if the campaign did not relearn within a week. Another user, scottylebot, ran two non-brand Shopping campaigns at 325% and 400% that had returned more than 10x on a long conversion cycle. After raising the targets on August 17, the best campaign sat at 2.2x with a 600% target. A new low-priority campaign using Maximize Conversion Value picked up auctions the older ones skipped, and the commenter concluded, "I don't think we'll get those crazy high roas numbers anymore."

Other explanations and tactics

Not everyone accepted the budget-cap story. Accomplished_One_611 and Skinnyyungwheatbread suggested that branded search terms might have inflated the original returns, and ppcbetter_says made a similar argument, that returns of that size usually mean ads reaching people who had already decided to buy. AlPontes reported that many accounts with the same setup saw Performance Max performance fall. A user named zoglog attributed the change to a Google aim of lifting cost per click across auctions, a claim for which the thread supplies no evidence.

On tactics, TTFV wrote that the realistic options were a target near what is achievable or Maximize Conversion Value with no target, and flimflambam said a move to Maximize Conversion Value had put the account "back to crushing". Viper2014 wrote that tROAS and tCPA were broken for now. A user named coinsonafleek reported leaving several accounts alone apart from retraining the bid strategy to the latest ROAS or CPA target. Writing as an agency practitioner, fathom53 said clients had been moved to their actual ROAS in phases, some before August 17 and some after, and that three to four weeks were needed to judge any bid strategy change. Sothisismylifehuh noted that Google had signaled the change well in advance and had supplied transition tools.

Two replies stood out for method. DecodeTheSERPs suggested comparing search lost impression share to budget against lost impression share to rank, split by product group, for the four weeks before and after August 17: a rise in the budget figure would point to the target as the lever, while a rise in the rank figure would indicate being outbid. The same commenter observed that several strategy swaps in a few weeks meant the account never had a clean read on any of them. QuantumWolf99 proposed setting a target slightly above break-even ROAS per product tier, calculated as 1 divided by margin, and raising budgets in steps under 20%, and added that Maximize Conversions ignores product value and tends to drift toward cheap SKUs. The arithmetic is simple: a 10% margin implies break-even at 1,000%, a 33% margin at roughly 300%.

RobertBobbertJr put the shortest version of the thread's skepticism: "Why didn't you just try what the rep suggested?" User wh0isThis179 and Nexmital echoed the point.

The auction conditions underneath

The thread unfolds against a market where prices were already rising, at least in Europe. Channable's benchmark of EUR 1.38 billion in Google Ads spend, published on July 12, 2026, found cost per click on Shopping and Performance Max up 15% between June 2025 and June 2026, while average ROAS fell 46% on Performance Max and 43% on standard Shopping. That is a vendor dataset drawn from its own customer base, and other datasets point in other directions. A Measured analysis argued that the August 17 recalibration lands on auctions already costlier than a year earlier, and that separating platform-driven from auction-driven cost movement would be difficult because both appear in the same reports. A separate Adthena piece recorded Greg Finn of Cypress North predicting that the change would lift cost per click in affected accounts.

Microsoft Advertising took a different line. It has restated that campaigns may over-achieve on target CPA and target ROAS regardless of budget-limited status, so the behavior Google retired remains available on a competing platform.

Why this matters for the marketing community

Three things stand out. First, a target had been doing two jobs. It expressed an efficiency goal, and in budget-limited campaigns it also acted as an implicit filter on which auctions to enter. Advertisers who set a low number and watched a high one come back may have been relying on the second function without naming it, and the August 17 change separates the two. Whether that is a gain in clarity or a loss of a useful lever depends on the account, and the thread contains both views.

Second, the notice period did not prevent confusion. From the June 15 disclosure to the August 17 start was about nine weeks, and the adjustment tool had been available for six weeks by then, yet an advertiser was asking in October how to recreate the previous outcome. PPC Land noted at the time that the date stacked with other structural changes, including the September 1 conversion of some campaigns to AI Max for Search, which complicates any attempt to credit one change for one result.

Third, the diagnostic problem is real. In this thread, one account changed bid strategies repeatedly, competitors were reacting to the same rule, auction costs were rising and the budget status was the hinge. Each is a separate variable, and a post-change drop in sales cannot by itself isolate the cause. Google's own account is that predictability is the point; the thread's account is that predictability cost some advertisers their cheapest volume. Both can be accurate for different campaigns. As the replies show, practitioners are still testing which strategy, target and budget combination comes closest to the earlier results, and the comparison data will likely come from accounts, not from announcements.

Timeline

Summary

  • Who: An advertiser posting as NorskBavian on r/PPC, dozens of commenting practitioners, and Google, whose Ads liaison and representatives are referenced.
  • What: A Google Ads advertiser reported lower Shopping sales and rankings after a 300% target ROAS setup that had delivered 3,000-4,000% stopped behaving as before, and commenters tied it to Google's change for budget-limited Target CPA and Target ROAS campaigns.
  • When: Google disclosed the change on June 15, 2026, began rolling it out on August 17, 2026, and the Reddit thread was shown as one day old on October 5, 2026.
  • Where: Reddit's r/PPC community, concerning Google Ads Shopping campaigns, within a change covering Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen and Travel.
  • Why: Google says the change makes budget-limited campaigns perform more predictably toward stated targets; practitioners in the thread say it removed a budget-driven efficiency that had produced returns far above the target.