What happened
Advertisers are seeing Target CPA and Target ROAS listed as standalone bidding strategies during Google Ads campaign setup — sitting alongside Maximize Clicks, Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value, Target Impression Share, and Manual CPC. Until now you reached them as optional targets tucked inside Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value, a nesting arrangement plenty of advertisers never stopped finding awkward.
Google Ads expert Natasha Kaurra spotted the new layout and posted it on LinkedIn. Google hasn't confirmed anything, which means this could be a test that vanishes as quietly as it appeared. Google Ads trainer Charlotte Osborne reads it as groundwork for the bidding change scheduled for August 17, suggesting the revised layout makes it clearer for advertisers who want to switch between Target CPA or Target ROAS and the Maximize strategies. That connection is her interpretation, not Google's.
Be precise about what this is: a setup-screen change. Your live strategies are bidding exactly the way they did last week. Nothing about how the algorithms behave has been announced, and nothing has been observed to change.
Why this matters
Setup screens are where documented process lives. If you run an agency or a team with SOPs, your training docs almost certainly contain screenshots of the old layout — select Maximize Conversions, then set a target CPA. Someone following those instructions on the new screen will hunt for a setting that moved, or worse, pick a strategy that merely looks right and hit save.
The failure mode isn't dramatic, which is exactly the problem. A wrong bid strategy chosen off an unfamiliar screen doesn't throw an error. It spends normally, reports normally, and quietly optimizes toward the wrong objective until somebody audits the account weeks later. That is why an unconfirmed layout tweak still earns fifteen minutes of your attention this week.
There's also a fair read that this is Google unwinding a consolidation advertisers never loved. Folding tCPA and tROAS into the Maximize strategies simplified Google's menu but buried the distinction between get-me-volume and hit-my-number at the exact moment it mattered. Separating them again — if it sticks — makes the choice honest at the point of decision. August 17 will tell us whether that's the plan or wishful pattern-matching.
What to do about it
Check your own setup flow this week
Open a draft campaign and look at the bidding step. If your account has the new layout, screenshot it and log the date — you want a record of when the interface shifted in case configuration questions surface later. Rollouts like this land account by account, so your view and a colleague's may disagree. Don't publish the draft.
Update SOPs and training screenshots
If the layout changed for you, refresh every internal doc that walks someone through bid-strategy selection. This matters most for accounts touched by juniors, VAs, or clients who self-serve. A doc that says to tuck the target inside Maximize Conversions is now a doc that produces hesitation at best and misconfiguration at worst.
Put August 17 on the calendar
The confirmed bidding change lands then. Before it does, inventory which campaigns run Target CPA or Target ROAS as targets inside Maximize strategies, so you can verify nothing about their behavior shifts when the switch-over arrives. A ten-minute list now beats forensic archaeology later.