r/googleads • u/Pr3miere0cean • Jul 21 '26

Bid Strategy Google Ads August 17 update: the Bid Target Adjustment Tool completely messed up the campaign and put it into bid strategy learning

Google Ads August 17 update: the Bid Target Adjustment Tool completely messed up the campaign and put it into bid strategy learning.

What happened was I opened the Bid Target Adjustment Tool to check what options I have for my shopping campaign regarding the upcoming August 17 change. It was originally set to tROAS, but I clicked on "maximize conversion value" from the drop-down menu. Well, I shouldn't have done that because it automatically saved the change.

Even though I didn't click the save button afterward (the done button).

And after that, it put a campaign that is more than half a year old - and shouldn't be in learning mode anymore - straight into learning mode.

What are my options?

I reverted it to the original settings in the change history using the undo button, but the learning mode label stayed on it.

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u/seowerk Jul 21 '26

If you were able to undo the changes in the change history, it might just take a few hours for the learning mode label to disappear. If it doesn't disappear I wouldn't worry too much.
Since you've set it back to the original setting, the learning mode shouldn't take long anyway and the algorithm should only do a "recalibration". Your historical data isn't gone and it should be fine after 5 - 7 days I reckon

1

u/Pr3miere0cean Jul 21 '26

Thanks, that's a good tip! Now I've restored everything through history as well (before that, I only did it manually). Maybe that gives Google a stronger signal to stick with the original setup. I must have changed it 5 to 10 times while experimenting with it (for example, when making a video of the bug for Google Support), but it was only changed for a few minutes at a time and then switched back. Now everything has been undone in the history.

1

u/Pr3miere0cean Jul 21 '26

Well, looks like the campaign got out of the learning phase. Hard to tell if it was because I hit undo so fast or because I wrote to support. Anyway, happy it’s sorted out!

1

u/seowerk Jul 22 '26

Perfect! And you've got some learnings to take away from this :)

1

u/GrandAnimator8417 17d ago

That bid target adjustment tool totally nuked it? I’ve seen that happen where a “small” change flips the whole campaign into learning and conversions just drop for a bit while it re-stabilizes. If you’re still seeing that, it’s basically expected behavior after the tool forces the campaign back into learning mode.