Google announced at the end of February that they will be deprecating tCPA (target CPA) and tROAS (target ROAS). But don’t panic…
Keep an eye out – we still don’t know when this will take place, and that shouldn’t affect your campaigns just yet.
On Search campaigns, tCPA and tROAS will no longer be acting independent of the Maximise conversions and Maximise conversion value bid strategies. You will therefore be able to use tCPA and tROAS as a threshold, to keep the maximise bidding strategies under control the smart bidding strategies will be combined.
“Instead of having Target CPA as a separate bidding strategy, we will be folding Target CPA functionality into the Maximize Conversions bidding strategy by adding an optional Target CPA field. Similarly, instead of having Target ROAS as a separate bidding strategy, we will be folding Target ROAS functionality into the Maximize Conversion Value bidding strategy by adding an optional Target ROAS field.”
From April 2021, the option will be available to some advertisers, and Google will allow more and more accounts to get access to this option over time, in a BETA style rollout. Google has said that it would not affect your campaigns using tCPA or tROAS and that using the threshold option within the combined bidding strategy would result in the bidding strategies behaving in the same way.
Don’t worry, you should still get a few months notice from Google before the change is happening on your account and the tCPA and tROAS strategies are fully deprecated as we know them. Google has said that “advertisers can continue to create Target CPA or Target ROAS bid strategies or manage existing Target CPA or Target ROAS bid strategies, even after [they] introduce the new representation in April”.
For the adventurous ones here, be wary of starting to switch your campaigns to Maximise Conversion or Maximise Conversion value bid strategies as your overall performance could be affected before the new option is rolled out.
