What Changed
From 17 August 2026, campaigns in a “Limited by budget” status using Target CPA, Target ROAS, or Target CPC (Demand Gen only) optimise more consistently toward the target you set, including when budgets are adjusted. The previous behaviour, where budget-constrained campaigns often overdelivered against their stated target, has ended.
Google states this does not directly increase spend and daily and monthly budget limits are still respected. Campaigns that are not budget-constrained are unaffected, as are manual CPC and Target impression share strategies. Google will not automatically adjust targets or budgets. A Target Adjustment Tool sits in account notifications and on the Campaigns page.
Why It Matters
Most Indian D2C accounts run at least one budget-capped campaign, and a good number of them have been quietly benefiting from the old behaviour without anyone noticing. If a tROAS campaign was capped at a modest daily budget and consistently returning well above target, that headroom is what Google will now spend chasing volume.
Pull a 30-day view of every campaign showing “Limited by budget” and compare actual CPA or ROAS against the target set. Where actual is materially better than target, you have two honest options: reset the target to match recent actuals and keep the efficiency, or leave it and accept more volume at lower efficiency. Doing nothing is choosing the second one by default.
Where scale matters more than a specific efficiency number, moving to Maximise conversion value inside a fixed budget is cleaner than fighting the target. Google specifically advises against applying data exclusions or new bid limits as a reaction to this change, and against evaluating results before one to two conversion cycles have passed. Performance Planner forecasts may also be unreliable through the end of August.