Two Platforms, Ten Days, One Missing Brake Pedal

What Microsoft actually removed from your ppc bidding strategy#

A fox that hunts the same hedgerow every night learns exactly where the ground gives way. Pull that ground out from under it without warning, and even a patient predator stumbles. That is roughly what happened to two advertising platforms' worth of ppc bidding strategy this August, and every practitioner running one now has homework.

From 1 October 2026, Microsoft Advertising removes Max CPC as an option when creating new, non-portfolio campaigns on five bid strategies: Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximise Conversions, Maximise Conversion Value and Maximise Clicks. Per Search Engine Land, Target Impression Share, Enhanced CPC and portfolio strategies keep the option, and campaigns already running with Max CPC set are reported to retain it.

A notice, not an announcement#

ppc.land's own coverage quotes the notice text directly: "From 1 October 2026, Max CPC will no longer be available when creating new non-portfolio campaigns." The outlet is careful to note something worth repeating here rather than smoothing over: "No rationale for the removal appears in the notice or the liaison post," and the claim that existing campaigns keep their Max CPC setting is reported elsewhere, not stated plainly by Microsoft itself. The whole change reached advertisers as customer email and a LinkedIn post from Microsoft Advertising Liaison Navah Hopkins, not a formal blog announcement, a quiet way to retire a control this widely used.

Search Engine Land's separate reporting did surface Microsoft's own reasoning, sourced to the change itself: "Max CPC limits can interfere with automated bidding by overriding an advertiser's stated performance goals and potentially creating spend pacing irregularities." The same reporting adds that advertisers using Target CPA or Target ROAS "tend to have an easier time achieving their goals than advertisers relying on legacy controls such as Max CPC." Spend pacing, in plain terms, is simply whether a budget is spent smoothly across a day or lurches in bursts, and Microsoft's argument is that a hard ceiling makes that lurching worse, not better.

The same week, a second platform pulled the same lever#

Ten days is not long enough to be a coincidence twice. In the same window, OpenAI preselected Maximise results, one of the automated bidding strategies now competing for the same budgets, as the default for eligible new ad groups inside ChatGPT Ads Manager, with the change reflected in its help centre from around 12 August and circulating to advertisers the week of 17 August.

Maximise results sets and adjusts bids on its own toward clicks or conversions, and OpenAI's own documentation carries an unusually candid caveat, reported by ppc.land: the strategy "prioritizes result volume and does not guarantee delivery against a specific CPA, CPC, ROAS, or other cost-efficiency target at this time." There is no account-level preference to switch the default off. The choice recurs at every single ad group, so an advertiser who wants a manual bid ceiling back has to ask for it, every time, forever, like a fox re-marking the same boundary of scent every single night because nothing else holds it in place.

Neither company frames this as a coordinated shift, and there is no evidence it is one. What connects them is the direction of travel: the platforms setting the rules for a huge share of the paid-search and paid-answer economy both decided, independently, that advertisers should trust the algorithm's pacing over their own hard ceiling. A single quiet notice is a policy update. Two, on two separate platforms, inside the same fortnight, is a trend worth building a ppc bidding strategy around rather than reacting to after the fact.

Every practitioner running a ppc bidding strategy across more than one platform now has the same question twice over: which of the remaining controls are genuinely stable, and which one gets quietly folded into an automated bidding strategy next. There is no reliable answer beyond watching the notices as closely as the platforms themselves seem to want you not to.

Why the brake pedal mattered to a smart bidding strategy#

Max CPC is not a sophisticated tool. It is a blunt one, a promise that a platform will never pay more than a stated amount for a single click, whatever else the automated bidding strategies underneath decide to do. Blunt tools survive in a toolkit because they solve one problem precisely: a genuine, hard budget ceiling that a business cannot exceed, no matter how good the platform's own promise of eventual efficiency sounds.

Microsoft's own supporting data is real but older and narrower than this specific change: a 2024 Microsoft Advertising blog post reported that advertisers using enhanced CPC saw "an average of 6% lower cost per acquisition compared with manual CPC." That figure describes a gentler control, enhanced CPC, which nudges bids rather than removing a ceiling entirely, so treat it as background on the direction of Microsoft Advertising automated bidding thinking rather than direct proof this particular change pays off the same way.

A ppc bidding strategy that leaned on Max CPC as its emergency brake now has to find that discipline somewhere else, whether that is a stricter budget cap, closer manual review, or simply watching spend pacing more often than the automated system's own dashboard invites you to. A smart bidding strategy is only as smart as the human still checking its pacing, and this change quietly removes one of the few checks that used to run itself.

What your automated bidding strategies need checked before October#

None of this is a reason to panic about ppc bidding strategy or smart bidding strategy generally. Target CPA and Target ROAS bidding have matured for years and, per Microsoft's own reporting, tend to hit their goals more reliably than manual controls once they have enough conversion data to learn from. The change is a reason to check specific accounts, specific campaigns, and specific dates before the option quietly disappears, the same patient prowl through the account settings a fox gives a hedgerow before it commits to a route through it.

Microsoft Ads automated bidding is, on the platform's own numbers, usually the more efficient choice once a campaign has enough data behind it. The genuine exposure sits in the gap before that data exists, precisely the window a hard ceiling used to cover for free.

What practitioners are actually saying#

The paid-search community caught this fast, largely through the trade outlets that watch platform notices closely rather than a splashy announcement from either company. Search Engine Roundtable and RS Web Solutions both flagged the same notice within a day of it circulating, a reminder that the practitioner grapevine still outruns most brands' own account managers on a change like this. Searches of Microsoft Advertising's own blog turned up no formal post announcing the removal at the time of writing, which is its own quiet answer to how much notice most advertisers actually get before a ppc bidding strategy has to change.

Independent PPC analysis of the ChatGPT Ads change reached a similar conclusion to Microsoft's own reasoning: automated bidding tends to reward the advertiser once a platform has enough data to work with, which is exactly the trade-off this piece keeps circling. Target CPA and Target ROAS bidding are not the villains of this piece. They are, by Microsoft's own account, usually the better-performing choice once a campaign has enough data. The genuine risk is losing a safety net on a brand-new campaign before it has that data, precisely the moment a hard ceiling protects a budget most, the exposed clearing before the brush grows back thick enough to hide the next mistake.

That is the gap folkfox closes for PPC clients who need a ppc bidding strategy that survives the next quiet notice: rebuilding a ppc bidding strategy around whatever control each platform still offers, watching spend pacing manually where the platform no longer promises to, and treating every quiet notice like this one as a trigger for an account audit, not an afterthought. A good ppc bidding strategy assumes the platform will keep moving the furniture and plans the next room accordingly, rather than being surprised every single time. The same discipline applies across paid social and app marketing accounts running their own flavours of automated bidding strategies right now.

If your account still has campaigns you plan to rebuild after 1 October, or new ChatGPT Ads ad groups going live without a checked bid strategy, that audit is worth doing this week rather than after the ceiling is already gone. folkfox can run it with you.

Frequently asked questions#