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Thoughts and lessons on client selection, burnout, pricing, and modernising legacy accounts, from someone who's run a Google Ads for years.
Data from launching a brand new campaign using Target CPA bidding.
Published May 2024. Last updated July 2026.
Normally you wouldn't launch a new campaign using a conversion-based bid strategy. Instead you'd use maximise clicks or manual CPC till you'd got some conversions. (The actual number varies but 15-30 in the last 30 days is often cited.) After that you could change to a conversion-based bid strategy.
I tried an experiment launching a brand new campaign using the Target CPA bid strategy. In this case I thought that it was likely to be successful because:-
- The account already has a lot of conversion data (> 95 000 leads over all time). We usually get around 1500 conversions (leads from a form or a call) a month.
- The new campaign targets a similar demographic to the existing campaigns.
- It's a reversible decision. If we didn't get traction in the first week I could change to targeting clicks.
- The client trusts me and gives me wide latitude to manage the account as I see fit. If the launch didn't go as planned I wouldn't be under a lot of pressure to make it work right away.
Here are the results for the first week.
| Day | Impressions | Clicks | Conversions | Cost | Cost per Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday | 479 | 132 | 24 | $623.95 | $26.00 |
| Wednesday | 785 | 214 | 33 | $1102.43 | $33.41 |
| Thursday | 684 | 169 | 28 | $862.68 | $30.81 |
| Friday | 729 | 156 | 24 | $886.90 | $36.95 |
| Saturday (half day) | 385 | 81 | 9 | $584.17 | $64.91 |
| Sunday (closed) | 0 | 0 | 0 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Monday | 950 | 204 | 32 | $1626.07 | $50.81 |
I'm happy with the results and would use this approach again under similar circumstances.
For background, here are the main campaign settings:-
- Budget: $1000/day.
- Bid strategy: Portfolio version of the Target CPA bid strategy. Target CPA set to $100, max cost per click set to $10. (I've written about my reasons for using the porfolio version here.)
- Schedule: Ads run only during the client's working hours.
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