Google’s Ads Product Liaison, Ginny Marvin, recently interviewed Product Manager Tal Akabas for her Ads Decoded podcast. I always love when product managers share behind-the-scenes details; you inevitably learn more than what is shared in official blog posts or launch communications. While much of the episode focused on new channel prioritization, it revealed several tactical nuggets that are immediately useful for advertisers heading into the holiday season and Black Friday Cyber Monday.
In this post, I’ll share the most interesting tidbits from their conversation. I tend to focus on technical details because that is where the real impact lies. Let’s look at what one of the leaders building Google Ads just revealed and what it means for your campaigns.
If you haven’t watched the episode, here is the context. Marvin and Akabas spend roughly 40 minutes on a wave of bidding and budgeting updates, with Channel Prioritization and Budget Allocation as the headline. Brooke Osmundson already covered that launch here at Search Engine Journal, so I keep my take on it short and spend more time on the details that got less attention.
Key Takeaways
- Changing tCPA, tROAS, or budgets on a steady-state campaign doesn’t trigger “Learning” status or erase history, though performance can still adjust.
- Skip Seasonality Adjustments for standard holiday spikes. Save them for surprises Google can’t anticipate.
- Consider Promotion Mode for scheduled promotions where available. Smart Bidding Exploration requires eligible tROAS campaigns with budgets that do not constrain spend.
- Channel Prioritization only does something on days your budget limits spend, so it does nothing on a truly uncapped tCPA or tROAS campaign. Budget Allocation does the limiting, and its percentages apply to your budget setting, not your actual spend.
- Starting in February 2027, Google replaces the existing Display Expansion allocation behavior. Audit Search campaigns that use Display Expansion now, and set Display to Low Priority with a 50% allocation to keep today’s behavior.
- Reconcile demand-led budgeting with finance through values and targets grounded in your economics, filtered planning tools, and external pacing guardrails.
1. Changing Targets Or Budgets Doesn’t Reset Learning
One of the most stubborn myths in PPC is that changing a tCPA or tROAS target, or moving a daily budget by more than 20%, wipes out what Smart Bidding has learned. Google’s learning guidance distinguishes the “Learning” status in the interface from the continuous adjustments happening in the background.
Akabas addressed this directly (25:14). On an existing, steady-state campaign, changing a target or budget does not erase historical data or trigger “Learning” status. He explained that the backend already has bid landscape data and can scale bids in proportion to target changes.
New campaigns can still need time to ramp up for their particular mix of assets, targeting, and goals (26:03). New or reactivated bid strategies, composition changes, and significant conversion-goal changes can also trigger “Learning” status. For new conversion-oriented campaigns, Google’s advice in the episode is to start with Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value rather than use Maximize Clicks as a mandatory first step.
This removes a psychological barrier to changing targets when business conditions warrant it. It does not mean performance cannot fluctuate as bids and traffic mix change. Allow for conversion delay and avoid repeated target changes within a single conversion cycle unless there is a clear business need.
See also: Ask A PPC: What Are Learning Periods In Digital Marketing?
2. Skip Seasonality Adjustments For Standard Holiday Spikes
Seasonality Adjustments let you tell Smart Bidding to expect a short-term change in conversion rates, such as during a sale. It is tempting to switch one on for Black Friday, but Akabas said you don’t necessarily need them just because it’s BFCM (29:12). Google’s year-over-year models already anticipate standard holiday spikes.
Our own study of BFCM accounts from 2022 to 2024 found that accounts using seasonality adjustments saw CPCs rise about twice as much as those that didn’t. The adjustment cohort’s ROAS fell in each year studied, while its revenue grew faster than the no-adjustment cohort’s. These observational comparisons show an association; they do not isolate the effect of the adjustment from differences between advertisers and promotions.
Save adjustments for anomalies the AI can’t know about, such as an off-cycle flash sale or a sitewide discount much deeper than last year’s.
3. Use Promotion Mode, And Give Smart Bidding Exploration Room To Work
In the episode, Akabas says Promotion Mode is rolling out to Search and PMax. It lets you schedule a promotional window with dedicated budget and bid changes (19:20). He explains that it combines faster ramp-up with Smart Bidding Exploration during the window to capture additional traffic.
It pairs well with Campaign Total Budgets, which remain limited to net-new campaigns. You can also schedule Promotion Mode on existing steady-state campaigns.
Smart Bidding Exploration, now rolling out to Retail PMax and coming to Shopping (17:13), gives the algorithm a small ROAS tolerance to bid into new queries and incremental auctions. That’s typically around 10% effective ROAS flexibility, per Google’s FAQs.
Here is the catch: Smart Bidding Exploration requires an eligible tROAS campaign with an unconstrained budget. That means a budget set high enough that it does not limit spend, so the ROAS target guides spending. If the budget becomes constrained, the exploration mechanism is disabled.
4. Channel Prioritization And Budget Allocation: The Catch-22 With Uncapped Budgets
This is the headline feature of Ginny’s podcast episode. For the rollout scope, defaults, and setup, see Brooke’s report. Here is the short version, plus the mechanics that matter for governance.
The problem these controls solve is familiar. Cross-channel campaigns like Performance Max combine inventory in a single campaign, while Search campaigns have offered an on/off choice for Search Partners and the Google Display Network (GDN). The new controls add a middle ground for advertisers who want to retain access while steering allocation.
The episode introduces new controls for Search, Shopping, Performance Max, and Demand Gen (01:08). Channel Prioritization sorts supported channels into High Priority and Low Priority tiers. Budget Allocation adds an optional, best-effort daily spend limit for Low Priority channels in Search, Shopping, and Performance Max.
All channels start as High Priority. In Performance Max and Demand Gen, Google’s own properties are grouped as “Google channels.” Availability varies by campaign type and rollout timing.
One discrepancy to flag: Google’s help doc says Budget Allocation is not supported for Demand Gen, yet Akabas suggested that Demand Gen advertisers who opted out of Display could test back in by adding it at lower priority or with a budget allocation (04:52). Check what your account actually offers before you plan around it.
How the tiers behave depends on whether your campaign is limited by budget, as Marvin clarified in a follow-up note on LinkedIn. With a budget limit, spend flows to High Priority channels first. Once additional High Priority spend would miss your target, budget shifts to Low Priority channels, but only when they’re predicted to deliver conversions at or better than your target, and Budget Allocation caps are still respected.
Without a budget limit, which is Google’s recommended setup, Channel Prioritization alone changes nothing, because Smart Bidding already goes after every eligible conversion at your target across all the networks you’re opted into.
For Max Conversions, Max Conversion Value, and Max Clicks, Google’s help documentation describes a simple spill-over: High Priority channels get the budget first, and Low Priority channels see spend only when High Priority can’t use the full daily budget.
That creates a catch-22. Google recommends uncapped, demand-led budgets with tCPA and tROAS (32:26), but a budget that never limits spend leaves Channel Prioritization nothing to do.
Akabas notes it still works on any day your budget limits spend, even if the campaign is generally unconstrained (03:37).
To restrict Low Priority channels on an uncapped campaign, you need Budget Allocation, which sets a daily percentage spend ceiling on any Low Priority channel.
Per Google’s help documentation, a Low Priority channel set to 0% gets no spend. In Performance Max, where you can’t opt out of channels individually, that is effectively your opt-out.
Details To Check In The Fine Print
Before you roll these settings out across accounts, check the limitations in Google’s current technical documentation.
- The “ghost budget” math trap. Budget Allocation percentages are calculated against your average daily budget setting, not your actual spend. Say you set a $5,000 “uncapped” budget on a campaign that typically spends $500 a day. A 10% Display cap would still permit $500 in daily Display spend, potentially consuming 100% of the campaign’s typical daily volume.
- “Best effort” enforcement. Google notes that Budget Allocation caps operate on a “best-effort” basis and reset daily without rollover. Consequently, during periods of high traffic volatility, Low Priority spend may exceed your defined cap.
- Shared budget rules. Channel Prioritization works with shared budgets, but every campaign on the budget must be the same type (all Search or all Shopping, for example).
- Verify the cap in cost reporting. Because enforcement is best-effort, check actual spend by channel. Marvin pointed advertisers to the “Where your conversions come from” Sankey chart in the Performance Max Channel performance report. At the campaign level, toggle on “Cost” to see total cost and percentage of cost for each channel. For Search, Shopping, and Demand Gen, segment by network to see cost by channel. Compare those numbers to your cap as a percentage of the average daily budget, not of actual spend.
Two more compatibility details to check, both from Google’s help documentation: Channel Prioritization works with Campaign Total Budgets only in Demand Gen, and both controls can be used in Custom Experiments, with restrictions. Multi-campaign shared budgets are unsupported in those experiments, and all channels in them are treated on the same priority tier.
Display Expansion Behavior Changes Starting In February 2027
Brooke’s report flags the February 2027 Display change as well. The podcast adds the detail on how today’s behavior works.
Right now, when a Search campaign is opted into Display through Display Expansion, the existing allocation behavior treats Display as a low-priority outlet for unused Search budget (07:17). This behavior is also described in Google’s Display Expansion documentation.
Google’s current documentation says Search campaigns with Display Expansion enabled will begin migrating to the new controls in February 2027. The episode describes the transition as a February-March timeframe (09:09).
The existing allocation behavior will be replaced, so advertisers may see a shift in spending between Search, Search Partners, and Display. Setting channel priorities before the migration replaces the old behavior right away.
Marvin has said Google will share clearer guidance as the date gets closer.
You have two fixes:
- Use the one-click migration button Google plans to add to the UI.
- Manually set Display to Low Priority with a 50% budget allocation. Marvin confirmed on LinkedIn that this keeps your current configuration, and Akabas uses the same 50% example in the episode (08:00), subject to best-effort enforcement.
Action item: Audit your Google Ads Manager Account (formerly known as My Client Center of MCC) now and flag every legacy Search campaign opted into Display Expansion, so the February 2027 change doesn’t catch your team off guard. Also check which of those campaigns use Target Impression Share, because Google’s doc says the Display Network will no longer serve on Search campaigns that use that bid strategy.
5. Lifecycle Goals And ‘Reporting-Only’ New Customer Acquisition
Feeding better business data into Google Ads remains the highest-leverage activity for PPC managers. Customer Lifecycle Goals let you tell Google which kind of customer you are after, whether new, lapsed, or loyal. Three updates make that easier to execute and audit:
- NCA reporting-only mode (13:15): Seeing new vs. returning customers used to require turning on New Customer Acquisition (NCA) bidding. A new reporting-only mode lets you measure lifecycle attribution and verify your data strength before putting bidding dollars behind it.
- Re-engagement only mode (16:04): Just launched in PMax, coming soon to Search and Shopping. Unlike Win-Back mode, which bids higher for lapsed users alongside regular traffic, this mode focuses the campaign’s budget on a churned or disengaged customer list.
- Loyalty mode (16:37): Now generally available for PMax and Shopping. It pairs loyalty audience lists with differential bidding and specialized promotional callouts or member pricing on Shopping ads.
Make sure your product feed segmentation matches your financial goals, too. Keep custom labels for margin, inventory depth, and price competitiveness up to date, then use those labels to inform product selection and campaign structure. Labels alone do not change bids or prevent acquisition premiums on low-margin or low-stock SKUs.
6. Bridging The ‘CFO Vs. CMO’ Gap In Demand-Led Budgeting
A major theme of the episode was demand-led budgeting (30:10). That means pairing uncapped or highly flexible budgets with strict tCPA or tROAS targets, so campaigns expand automatically when consumer demand spikes.
In auction theory, this makes sense, as Google’s research on auto-bidding auction design explores. If you’re willing to pay $50 per acquisition, you should buy every $50 conversion available instead of shutting off at 2:00 p.m. because a daily budget ran out. Akabas makes the related point that missing efficient conversions early can mean paying more for them later in the day, week, or month (31:45).
In practice, PPC teams answer to CFOs and clients who run on fixed monthly budgets allocated by business unit. As good as the math is, the business rules become the limiting factor. Three steps can help bridge the gap between Google’s auction AI and your finance department.
Step 1: Anchor Targets In Real Financials
Ground conversion values and efficiency targets in your economics (21:15), whether through profit-based values or revenue targets calibrated to margins and customer lifetime value. If values or targets overstate what an acquisition is worth, increasing budget headroom can scale unprofitable spend.
Step 2: Use Filtered Planning Tools
Google highlighted updates to Performance Planner (35:25), the Missed Opportunities Report (37:23), and V2 of the Recommended Investment Strategy tool (36:25). V2 now lets you filter budget reallocation suggestions by specific conversion goals or specific campaigns. To keep recommendations within Brand A’s P&L, explicitly restrict the selected campaigns to Brand A. The tool does not infer business-unit budget boundaries for you. Marvin also plugged the cross-channel budgeting tools in Google Analytics (38:42). They can pull in campaign data, including direct connections with platforms such as Meta, Pinterest, Reddit, and Snap, so you can run planning scenarios across channels.
Step 3: Simulate Demand-Led Budgets With External Pacing Guardrails
If you can’t uncap a client’s monthly budget, give campaigns enough daily headroom that features like Smart Bidding Exploration aren’t throttled on peak days. Keep daily budgets realistic enough that percentage-based Budget Allocation caps still do what you want them to.
Then layer external pacing monitors, scripts, or automated rule engines over your account groups to track cumulative monthly spend. If a demand surge pushes spend ahead of your monthly trajectory, rules can:
- Alert your team.
- Dial back daily caps.
- Raise tROAS targets.
That lets you capture demand-led upside while limiting the risk of an end-of-month overspend.
The Takeaway For PPC Teams
Product managers rarely go into this much detail in a launch post, which is why episodes like this one are worth the 40 minutes. Three details change what I would do this season. Leave your targets and budgets alone unless the business changes, because steady-state campaigns do not reset. Skip Seasonality Adjustments unless something truly unusual is happening that Google could not have seen coming. And check that your budget settings let Channel Prioritization and Smart Bidding Exploration do anything at all, since both depend on whether your budget is capped.
Then put the February 2027 Display Expansion change on your calendar, and feed Google the customer and margin data that make your targets worth trusting.
More Resources:
- Google Ads Is Automating More Decisions, Your Measurement Needs To Get Better
- Google Ads Budget Misallocation Is More Common Than You Think – And Harder To Spot
- Google’s Product Feed Strategy Points To The Future Of Retail Discovery
Featured Image: jamesteohart/Shutterstock
