Glossary
What is Maximise conversions bidding in Google Ads?
Melvin Salas1 min readVerified 3 October 2026
Short answer
Maximise conversions is a Google Ads Smart Bidding strategy that, in Google's words, uses Google's AI to set bids to help get the most conversions for your campaign while spending your budget. Google says it will try to fully spend your average daily budget.
Google says you must set up conversion tracking to use it, and that if you have a specific ROI goal you should use the Target CPA bid strategy instead. It warns that if you're currently spending much less than your budget, Maximise conversions could increase spend significantly.
Google says your existing bid adjustments aren't used, with one exception: you can still set device bid adjustments to -100%. It also doesn't recommend the Lost IS (budget) column with Maximise conversions, because these strategies are designed to spend the full daily budget and are limited by budget by design. It says the budget simulator accounts for this and the column doesn't.
Our reading, not Google's: with no target to aim at, the budget is the setting that decides what this strategy spends. A campaign moved onto it from a strategy that was spending well under its budget is the case Google's warning describes, and the first week of spend is worth watching.
We check this on every account we run
Riibon ties Meta and Google Ads back to outcomes measured outside the platforms, payments and bookings, so the number a decision rests on is one the business would recognise. When the platform and the business disagree, we show both and say which one we trusted.
Ask the Riibon app what your own account is counting as a conversion. It is free, with no time limit and no card. Or book a call and we run it for you.