The $2 bid cap and how to get out from under it
Under Maximize clicks, Ad Grants caps cost per click at $2.00 and the cap cannot be raised. Conversion-based strategies are exempt — and removing the cap multiplies spend by 12.4.
Oskar SznajderCo-founder Webup!
October 25, 2026 · 5 min read
Google Ad Grants applies a hard ceiling of $2.00 per click when the campaign runs on Maximize clicks. Against commercial competition in many categories, $2.00 is not enough to appear on the results page at all.
The cap has one exception, and it is the most valuable sentence in the whole policy: it does not apply to conversion-based bidding strategies — Maximize conversions, Maximize conversion value, Target CPA and Target ROAS.
What the cap costs you
We measured this on accounts where both strategies ran side by side, comparing each account against itself:
| After removing the cap | Change |
|---|---|
| Spend | 12.4× |
| Impressions | 8.4× |
| Clicks | 6.1× |
And on the measure that matters most — the share of keywords that enter the auction at all — removing the cap takes an account from 5.1% to 21.9%. More than four times as many keywords get a chance to serve.
Median cost per click by strategy, from the same portfolio:
| Bidding strategy | Median CPC | Highest CPC | Clicks above $2 | Cap applies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maximize conversions | $1.20 | $22.23 | 33.5% | no |
| Maximize conversion value | $5.94 | $18.75 | 88.6% | no |
| Maximize clicks | $0.80 | $2.00 | 0.0% | yes |
| Target impression share | $0.91 | $2.00 | 0.0% | yes |
| Manual CPC | $0.22 | $0.77 | 0.0% | yes |
The trap, and the way out
To switch to a conversion strategy you need conversions. To get conversions you need to win auctions, which the cap prevents. That is the trap most stalled accounts sit in.
The way out is to set up conversion tracking first, on something real and reachable — a form submission, a newsletter sign-up, a donation start, a phone click — and let it collect while the account still runs on Maximize clicks. Once the data is there, switch every search campaign. The cap applies per campaign, so one campaign left behind stays under the ceiling.
What removing the cap does not do
It does not raise your impression share. The account stays in the range of a few percent of available auctions — it simply enters up to five times more of them. And it is not instant: across 132 cases of crossing the $2 threshold in our data, the median change in the first quarter after the switch was +10 clicks and +$15 of spend. The switch opens the door; the result comes from what you do with phrases and landing pages afterwards.
Is your account still capped?
PING.NGO checks the bidding strategy on every campaign and flags the ones still running under the $2 ceiling.
