You can have the right keywords, great ad copy, and a great landing page, but if you choose the wrong bidding strategy, your entire budget will go astray. In fact, many small and medium-sized businesses face the same pain: whether to choose manual or automatic, whether to optimize by click, conversion or value?

In this article, we will analyze the 6 most popular bidding strategies and explain the differences between Standard Bidding and Portfolio Bidding, and how GTG CRM help turn lead data into optimal budget decisions.

Standard Bidding vs Portfolio Bidding

• Standard Bidding: You choose a separate bidding strategy for each campaign. For example, a Search Ads campaign runs Target CPA, a Display Ads campaign runs Maximize Clicks. This is the traditional way, suitable if each campaign has different goals and you want to control them separately.
• Portfolio Bidding: You create a “strategy portfolio” that applies to multiple campaigns, ad groups or keywords at the same time. The advantage is that Google has aggregated data from the entire portfolio for smarter optimization. Portfolios also save time management if you have multiple campaigns with the same goal (e.g., all lead gen campaigns run Target CPA = 200,000 VND).

Small businesses often let each campaign choose a different bidding, leading to fragmented data. Portfolios allow for centralized data collection and optimization, but are difficult to manage without a system to track lead quality from multiple sources. This is where GTG CRM comes in – collect all lead data from multiple campaigns to analyze actual performance, so you know whether to choose Standard or Portfolio.

Target CPA – Focus on cost per conversion

Many marketers are obsessed with the question: “How much is a potential customer really worth?”. Target CPA allows you to set this number and let Google automatically optimize the bid in each auction.

Advantages:

• Focus directly on cost/lead, easy to budget and scale, this is a lifesaver for those who do not want to "chase clicks".
• Auction by auction-time: take advantage of device signals, location, history... to lower CPA.

Disadvantages:

• Need sufficiently large & clean conversion data
• Setting CPA too low will result in no delivery, and too high will result in increased budget, which may result in poor quality leads.
• Optimize for “easy” conversions but poor quality if the target is configured incorrectly (micro-conversions, duplicates, spam).

To run Target CPA effectively, the account should have at least 30–50 conversions in 30 days, a short funnel and a stable landing page so Google has enough data to optimize. On the contrary, it should not be applied when the tracking is not standard, the funnel is too long like B2B with many steps, or the budget is too small and fluctuating, because it will make it difficult for AI to learn and the results are unstable.

GTG CRM solves this by providing actual CPA figures from real lead and customer data. For example, the system shows that the average CPA to get a real customer is 200,000 VND → you enter this number, turning Target CPA from chance to an accurate tool.

Maximize Clicks – When traffic is the number one priority

This is a Google strategy to maximize clicks within the budget. Many newly launched businesses often choose this method to attract a lot of traffic to the website, creating background data.

Advantages

• Drag Fast traffic, Suitable for the data generation phase, keyword/ad testing.
• Simple installation, Does not require much conversion data initially.

Disadvantages

• Does not guarantee quality: CTR can be high but leads are few/relevance is poor.
• Easy burn money on broad queries without negative, CPC limit, and audience filtering.

GTG CRM will clearly analyze how many of 1,000 clicks become leads and how many go further to the sales stage. Thanks to that, you will know whether the Maximize Clicks campaign is really worth it or just a "pretty but useless" report.

Maximize Clicks should be used when you run in the TOFU stage, need to quickly build a remarketing list or explore more keywords and customer behavior insights. On the contrary, it should not be used if the budget is limited, the business requires quality leads immediately, or the industry CPC is too high because it can easily increase costs without ensuring conversion efficiency.

Maximize Conversions

Unlike Maximize Clicks, this strategy lets Google automatically find the auctions that are most likely to bring in conversions. The problem is that if conversion tracking is not accurate, you are optimizing for… worthless actions (e.g., clicking on a button but not filling out a form). Many businesses fall into this trap, thinking that conversions are skyrocketing but revenue is not improving.

Advantages of using

• Google automatically hunts auctions with high conversion probability, rapidly increase the number of conversions.
• Integrated lead-gen/form filling, shorten learning time compared to Target CPA when data is limited.

Disadvantages of using

• Optimizing the wrong target if tracking is not standard (half-way registration, button click, pageview…).
• CPA can fluctuate: if micro-conversions are “primary” → quality drop.

Maximize Conversions should be used when you want to quickly increase the volume of registrations or form completions, especially in cases where conversion data is already available but not “good enough” to run Target CPA. However, this strategy is not suitable if the sales cycle is too long or the lead values are very different, because then you will need to use value-based bidding to optimize more accurately.

Maximize Conversion Value

This is a step up from Maximize Conversions. Google not only looks for more conversions, but also prioritizes higher-value conversions (e.g., orders of 5 million instead of 500k). However, many businesses do not attach value to conversions, only count the number. In that case, Maximize Conversion Value is no different from Maximize Conversions.

Advantages of using

• Optimize by value (revenue/AOV/LTV), not just number. Especially for e-commerce, SaaS has assigned conversion value.
• Self-prioritization high-value customers → increase revenue/advertising contract.

Disadvantages of using

• Required to have standard value tracking (GA4/CRM). Missing value → “blind” algorithm, effective ≈ Max Conversions.
• Can reduce volume when prioritizing high-value transactions.

Maximize Conversion Value should be used when businesses have clear differences in AOV or LTV, each transaction is associated with a specific value and the main goal is to optimize revenue instead of only focusing on the number of conversions. Conversely, it should not be used if you do not have reliable value data or operate in service/lead-gen industries where conversion values cannot be accurately valued.

Viewable CPM – Optimize for visible impressions

This strategy is primarily for Display or YouTube, where the goal is to increase brand awareness rather than directly convert. You pay based on 1,000 “viewable” impressions. This is a reasonable choice for businesses that want to cover their brand, but the pain lies in the fact that it is very difficult to measure the real impact on revenue.

Advantages of using

• Optimized visible impressions (viewable impressions) → good for brand lift on Display/YouTube.
• Cost/1,000 impressions usually low, fast coverage, seed remarketing files.

Disadvantages of using

• Not optimized for conversion, difficult to link directly to revenue (easily viewed as “image costs”).
• Need to manage frequency, brand safety, display location to avoid wasting/disturbance on users.

Viewable CPM should be used when you want to launch a new brand or product, deploy seasonal awareness campaigns, and plan to incorporate remarketing later to take advantage of the number of people who have seen the ad. On the contrary, it should not be used if the goal is short-term performance, limited budget or need to ensure a clear CAC/ROAS from the beginning, as this strategy is more about display than direct conversion optimization.

Manual CPC – Absolute control but laborious

Manual CPC allows you to set bids for each keyword, each ad group. This is the choice for marketers who want full control. But the problem is management fatigue. With hundreds of keywords, constantly adjusting CPC manually becomes a nightmare. Moreover, without clear data, you will fall into a state of "blind bidding", paying a lot of money for keywords that do not bring customers. GTG CRM helps reduce the burden by showing which keywords bring in quality leads and which ones generate junk clicks. With CRM data, you can focus your manual budget on profitable keywords, rather than “spending money” on impulse.

Advantages of using

• Absolute control by keyword/ad group; suitable priority keywords, brands, competitors.
• Easy to do targeted testing (location, device, time).

Disadvantages of using

• Labor-intensive: difficult to maintain when keyword lists are large/dynamic.
• Easy to miss opportunities during auction-time if response is slow; depends on the skill of the operator.

Manual CPC should be used when you have a limited budget and need to focus on hitting the right “drop point”, especially in niche markets with a small but high-quality keyword set. However, this strategy is not suitable for large accounts with a lot of fluctuations or when you do not have enough time or team to continuously monitor and optimize, as the effectiveness will easily lag behind Google's automated strategies.

Conclusion

Each bidding strategy has a reason to exist: Maximize Clicks to get traffic, Target CPA to control lead costs, Target ROAS and Maximize Conversion Value to optimize profits, Manual CPC for control, and Viewable CPM for brand recognition. But the common point is that no strategy is effective if you lack accurate customer data.

Google only knows clicks and conversions. But you need more than that: do those conversions turn into real customers, how much the order value is , what the real CPA is, is the ROAS achieved? And this is the role of GTG CRM: providing end-to-end data, helping you not choose a bidding strategy based on emotions, but on real data that is linked to revenue.

If you want every penny spent on Google Ads to not only bring in clicks but also turn into customers, combine Google Ads with GTG CRM today .