Every ad platform has two settings that control how aggressively it spends your money: budget (how much per day) and bidding strategy (how the platform decides what to spend on each individual auction).
Budget basics
Budget is set per campaign, per day, with a small daily overage allowed (Google can go up to 2× on a high-traffic day; Meta can pace within a 7-day average). What you set is what you'll spend, on average, per day.
- Floor: 10× your max CPC. If you're paying $3/click, $30/day is the absolute minimum to get enough data.
- Sweet spot to learn: enough to get 50 conversions a week. So if your CPA is $50, you need $50 × 50 / 7 ≈ $360/day.
- Scaling: raise budget by ~20% per week once a campaign is hitting target. Bigger jumps confuse the algorithm.
The five bidding strategies you'll see
1. Manual CPC
You set the maximum you'll pay per click. The platform never goes higher. Best for: brand-new accounts where you have no historical data, or campaigns where you want a hard ceiling. Worst for: accounts with enough data to use automated bidding instead.
2. Maximize Clicks
Spend the budget to get the most clicks possible, ignoring conversion signal. Useful for: pure traffic plays, brand awareness, content. Avoid for: anything with a conversion goal — it'll burn money on cheap, low-intent clicks.
3. Target CPA (or "Cost per result" on Meta)
You tell the platform "I want conversions for $50 each." It bids dynamically to hit that average. The most popular strategy for lead-gen.
4. Max Conversions
"Spend my whole budget to get the most conversions, no CPA cap." Aggressive — useful when you have lots of conversion data and want to test new audiences fast. Risky on small budgets.
5. Target ROAS (or "Maximize Conversion Value")
Best for e-commerce where conversions have different values. You set "I want $4 of revenue for every $1 spent." The platform optimizes for the highest-value conversions, not just the most.
When to switch strategies
- Account is brand new (under 30 conversions): Manual CPC. Set bids based on your max CPC math. Don't let the algorithm guess on no data.
- 30–100 conversions in last 30 days: Switch to Target CPA. The platform finally has signal.
- 100+ conversions and stable CPA: Test Max Conversions or Target ROAS. You're optimizing for scale.
- Different products with different margins: Target ROAS — set higher ROAS for low-margin products.
What never to do
- Set Target CPA below your historical CPA. The platform will starve the campaign of impressions trying to hit an impossible number.
- Change bidding strategy more than once a week. Each change resets the learning phase. Patience beats fiddling.
- Use automated bidding without conversion tracking installed. The platform is "optimizing" toward a goal it can't measure. Pure waste.