Microsoft Ads Drops Max CPC From New Campaigns, and Google Wants You Testing Instead

Two paid search announcements landed on August 20, 2026, and both point the same direction. Microsoft Advertising is removing the Max CPC field from new campaigns that use its automated bid strategies, and Google is adding new ways to test budgets and targets across Search campaigns before you commit to them. One platform is taking a manual lever away. The other is handing you a lab coat.

If you run search ads on a small budget, the Microsoft change is the one that touches your account first. The Max CPC setting is the ceiling that stops a single auction from eating a day of spend, and for a lot of small advertisers it has been the difference between trusting automated bidding and refusing to touch it.

Microsoft Advertising Removes Max CPC From New Automated Bidding Campaigns

Starting October 1, Microsoft Advertising will no longer offer a Max CPC setting when you create a new non-portfolio campaign on its automated bid strategies. Campaigns that already exist keep the setting. This is a change to what you can build, not a change that reaches into your account and strips something out.

What actually changes on October 1

The strategies losing the field are the standalone automated ones: Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value and Maximize Clicks. Search Engine Journal also lists Target CPA and Target ROAS among the affected strategies. Three things keep the setting, and Microsoft Advertising Product Liaison Navah Hopkins named them plainly: “Target impression share, eCPC, and Portfolio bidding strategies will retain the ability to add a Max CPC.”

That portfolio carve-out is the practical escape hatch. If you genuinely need a bid ceiling on a new campaign after October 1, moving it into a portfolio bid strategy is the documented way to keep one.

The rollout is staged. Microsoft removes the field from campaign creation in the web interface first, then from Microsoft Advertising Editor on a timeline it has not announced, with an API update expected after that. The news reached advertisers through direct notification emails titled “Updates to Max CPC for new campaigns” and through Hopkins on LinkedIn, rather than through a product blog post.

Why Microsoft says the ceiling has to go

The stated reason is that a Max CPC limit can interfere with automated bidding, including in cases where the maximum sits above the campaign’s average cost per click. The logic is that you are giving the system two instructions at once. You ask it to hit a cost per acquisition or a return target, then you forbid it from entering the specific auctions that would get you there.

Microsoft’s own automated bidding page still describes the maximum cost per click as an optional guardrail on Maximize Conversions, alongside a Target CPA. After October 1 that guardrail becomes budget, targets and campaign settings instead. Microsoft is encouraging advertisers to test removing the ceiling from existing campaigns using optimization experiments before the deadline, specifically so nobody discovers the effect for the first time during the holiday season.

What a Max CPC removal means for a small budget

On a large account, a bid ceiling is a tuning detail. On a small one it is a safety rail. If you spend a modest amount per day and one click can cost a meaningful share of it, the Max CPC field is what kept a single expensive auction from swallowing the day.

There are two honest actions here, and neither is complicated. First, if you have a new campaign you want to launch with a bid ceiling, build it before October 1 and it keeps the setting. Second, take one existing campaign that has a Max CPC on it and run an experiment with the ceiling removed, now, while the stakes are low. You will learn whether the ceiling was actually protecting you or quietly starving the campaign of the auctions it needed.

The controls that survive this are the ones worth getting right anyway: a daily budget you can defend, a conversion action that tracks something real, and a negative keyword list that keeps you out of searches you were never going to win.

Google Adds Multi-Campaign Tests and a One-Click Performance Planner

Google announced three additions to AI Max for Search campaigns the same day, all of them aimed at letting advertisers see the effect of a change before making it. The headline feature does not arrive until September.

Starting in September, you will be able to test different budgets and ROI targets across multiple Search campaigns inside a single A/B test. Until now an experiment lived inside one campaign, which made it hard to answer the question every owner actually asks, which is what happens to the business overall when spending goes up.

Performance Planner also gets an upgrade. It can now show how a change to bidding or budget targets may affect your existing campaign performance, and apply the suggested change to the campaign in one click.

The guardrail change that matters most

The quietest item on the list is the most useful one for a local business. AI Max experiments now run with brand controls and location controls switched on, so you can measure what AI Max does to your results without first removing the settings that keep it from matching competitor brand searches or reaching outside the area you actually serve.

Before this, testing AI Max meant testing it stripped of its guardrails, which is not the configuration any careful advertiser would run permanently. A test that no longer matches how you would deploy the feature is not much of a test.

Treat the one-click Performance Planner button with more caution. A forecast is a model of what could happen, not a commitment, and the shortest path between a projection and a live budget change is exactly where an unreviewed decision gets made. Read the projection, then decide.

The Pattern Behind Both Announcements

Put the two together and the direction is hard to miss. The manual levers are being retired, and platforms are replacing them with targets you set and experiments you run. Microsoft is removing a hard number you could type into a box. Google is offering a structured way to find out what a number should be.

That trade is not automatically bad. A bid ceiling set from instinct three years ago and never revisited is not a strategy either. But it does move the work. When you cannot cap a bid, your leverage lives in the budget, the conversion action, the negative keywords, and the offer on the landing page.

The near-term calendar is simple. New Microsoft campaigns that need a Max CPC should be built before October 1, existing ones should be tested without the ceiling while there is time to react, and any Google budget change worth making is now worth running as an experiment first.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Max CPC Change

Will my existing Microsoft campaigns lose their Max CPC?

No. Campaigns created before October 1 that already use the setting keep it. The change applies to campaign creation, so what disappears is your ability to add a Max CPC when building a new non-portfolio campaign on an automated bid strategy. Existing campaigns continue running with the ceiling in place.

Which bid strategies still allow a bid ceiling?

Target Impression Share, Enhanced CPC and portfolio bid strategies all keep the ability to set a Max CPC, on both new and existing campaigns. If you need a ceiling on something you build after October 1, a portfolio bid strategy is the documented route to keeping one rather than a workaround.

Should I remove the ceiling from my campaigns now?

Test it rather than assume it. Microsoft suggests using an optimization experiment on an existing campaign so you can see the effect on cost per click and conversion volume before the holiday season. Doing that now gives you weeks of data and a real answer instead of a guess made under pressure.

What is AI Max and do I need to use it?

AI Max is Google’s set of AI-driven matching and creative features for Search campaigns. You do not have to adopt it, and the new experiment options exist precisely so you can measure it against your current setup. Run it as a test with your brand and location controls enabled before deciding.

Is Google’s Performance Planner forecast reliable?

It is a projection built from historical auction data, not a guarantee. It is genuinely useful for comparing options, and much less useful as a reason to apply a change without reviewing it. The new one-click apply button shortens the distance between a forecast and a live spending decision.

Build a Paid Search Setup That Survives the Next Platform Change

Every one of these updates rewards the same unglamorous groundwork: clean conversion tracking, a disciplined negative keyword list, ad copy that earns the click, and search visibility that is not entirely rented. Our SEO and analytics work exists to make the organic side of that equation carry weight, so a bidding change never decides your month. Yesterday’s recap covered the FTC’s personalized pricing warning and AI Max going global on Microsoft, which is the other half of this same story. If you are staring at an ads account and cannot tell whether the Max CPC ceiling is protecting you or throttling you, tell us what you are seeing and we will look at it with you. To catch changes like the October 1 deadline the week they are announced rather than the week they bite, subscribe to the Demur Design newsletter in the footer below.

This recap is researched and drafted with AI, then reviewed, fact-checked, and published by Demur Design.