Week in Brief
- Google’s 17 August target-based bidding change applies only to campaigns sitting in “Limited by budget”, not to Smart Bidding across the board.
- Google’s own help documentation gives the example of a $10 Target CPA campaign currently delivering a $5 CPA, which moves toward $10 after 17 August if the advertiser changes nothing.
- Nick Fox, Google’s SVP of Knowledge and Information, said on 17 July that AI features in Search alone now send billions of clicks to websites every week.
- The first randomised field experiment on the question, run across 1,065 US Chrome users, measured a 39.8% fall in outbound organic clicks and a 34.5% rise in zero-click searches when an AI Overview appeared.
Google’s 17 August target-based bidding change applies only to budget-limited campaigns
The PPC community spent the week asking whether Google was rewriting Smart Bidding more broadly. The change applies to campaigns carrying a “Limited by budget” status that use a target-based bid strategy such as Target CPA or Target ROAS. Google’s own help documentation on changes to target-based bid strategies states that those campaigns will perform more consistently toward the target the advertiser set, including when budgets are adjusted.
Google’s published example is specific. A campaign with a $10 Target CPA that has been delivering a $5 actual CPA will deliver closer to $10 from 17 August if nothing changes. Google’s FAQ on the 17th August bidding change confirms the scope covers Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen and Travel campaigns, and that Google will not adjust budgets or targets automatically.
The Bid Target Adjustment Tool has been live in Google Ads since 6 July. Google says notifications go to advertisers whose campaigns were budget-limited at any point in the last 12 months.
What this target-based bidding change means for B2B, ITES, and SaaS
The exposed group is B2B and SaaS advertisers running always-on demand generation against a capped monthly budget. Those accounts sit in “Limited by budget” almost permanently, which is the exact condition that has been producing better-than-target cost per demo request for years.
A campaign holding a $250 Target CPA while actually delivering leads at $140 will drift toward $250 from 17 August. That is a cost per opportunity increase with no change to creative, audience, or budget. ITES firms buying enterprise search terms at high CPCs feel it the hardest, because a wide gap between target and actual is normal in those accounts.
Act this month rather than diagnosing it in September. Open the Bid Target Adjustment Tool this week and reset every budget-limited Target CPA campaign to its actual cost per conversion from the last 30 days.
Google extended the Dynamic Search Ads sunset to February 2027, which is the other Google Ads deadline B2B teams are working against this quarter.
AI features in Google Search send billions of clicks weekly, while the first randomised study measures a 39.8% click loss
Nick Fox, Google’s SVP of Knowledge and Information, posted on LinkedIn on 17 July that Google is now sending billions of clicks to websites every week through AI features in Search alone. He repeated Google’s existing claim that Search overall sends billions of clicks to the web daily.
Google’s generative AI performance reports in Search Console show impressions by page, country and device. They carry no click data.
At the same time, Saharsh Agarwal of the Indian School of Business and Ananya Sen of Carnegie Mellon published the first randomised field experiment on AI Overviews and publisher traffic on SSRN, last revised 17 June 2026. Across 1,065 US Chrome users between 7 January and 10 February 2026, AI Overviews cut outbound organic clicks by 39.8% and raised zero-click searches by 34.5% where they appeared, with sponsored clicks unaffected and no measurable change in user satisfaction.
What these AI Search Numbers mean for B2B, ITES, and SAAS
Both numbers are accurate. Fox is describing total clicks across an enormous query base. The study describes the click rate on an individual result page, which is the number that decides whether your top-of-funnel content still produces a pipeline.
B2B SaaS companies whose highest-traffic pages answer category-definition queries are the exposed group, because those are the query types where AI Overviews appear most often. Our first Marketing Weekly edition set out the same problem with 93% of AI search sessions ending without a click, and the SSRN causal estimate now sits underneath it.
A 39.8% click reduction changes the return on every new informational page you commission. Do not treat Google’s aggregate figure as a reason to leave those pages alone. Restructuring them as AI citation targets is the response.
Google renamed the NotebookLM crawler to Google-GeminiNotebook
Google renamed its NotebookLM user agent to Google-GeminiNotebook in its crawler documentation. It remains a user-triggered fetcher, which means it requests a page only when a person asks for it, not on a crawl schedule. Google Search Central’s crawler documentation lists the current user-triggered fetchers and their agent strings.
An allow-list still naming the old agent will silently block the fetch when a prospect drops your pricing page or implementation documentation into a Gemini notebook. That is a lost opportunity to be read at the evaluation stage of a long enterprise buying cycle. The one group affected is B2B and ITES companies whose security or CDN team maintains a named allow-list of bots rather than permitting all Google agents by pattern.
On Our Radar for Next Week
17 August bidding change lands in four weeks: The Bid Target Adjustment Tool has been live since 6 July, and Google says it notifies advertisers whose campaigns were budget-limited at any point in the past 12 months. Watch for that notification arriving in B2B accounts through late July and early August. It is the trigger to reset targets, not a suggestion to review them later.
Image generation inside AI Overviews: Google began rolling image generation into AI Overviews from 14 July using its Nano Banana model, in English, across every region that already supports image creation in AI Mode, over the coming weeks. Watch whether it starts appearing on commercial and comparison queries rather than only creative ones, because that decides how far organic results get pushed down the mobile result page.
Generative AI performance reports in Search Console: Google is rolling out AI Performance Reports to a limited group of site owners, with impressions broken down by page, country and device, and no click data. Watch for access appearing in your property through August.
The White Bunnie Observation
Across four B2B and SaaS accounts we monitored this week ahead of the 17 August bidding change, we found that campaigns marked “Limited by budget” were gradually seeing their cost per lead rise toward the assigned Target CPA. From 17 August, these accounts likely to use the available budget more aggressively to achieve the Target CPA, potentially increasing overall spend and pushing acquisition costs closer to the target—even where leads were previously being generated at a lower cost.
Questions We Were Asked This Week
Four questions came up more than once across client calls this week. The answers are here because if four clients asked, more readers are wondering.
If we do nothing before 17 August, how much does our cost per lead actually go up?
By roughly the gap between your Target CPA and your current actual CPA. Google’s own worked example is a $10 target delivering at $5, moving toward $10. If your target is $250 and you are delivering demo requests at $140, that is the size of the exposure. Google will not move the target for you, so the number stays wherever you last set it.
Does the bidding update apply if our campaigns are not limited by budget?
No. Google confirmed to Search Engine Roundtable that campaigns not constrained by budget will not see a change in bidding behaviour. The condition is the “Limited by budget” status combined with a target-based bid strategy. Campaigns on Maximise Conversions are outside the scope, though Google notes those strategies let CPA and ROAS fluctuate as budgets change.
Google says AI search sends billions of clicks. Is our traffic drop actually AI Overviews?
Look at the shape of the drop rather than the volume. A ranking loss shows as a falling position and falling impressions together. An AI Overview squeeze shows a stable position with falling clicks and falling CTR. Both figures in the news this week are true at once, because Fox is counting total clicks and the SSRN study is measuring the rate on individual pages.
Should we block the new Gemini notebook crawler?
For most B2B and SaaS companies, no. It fetches a page only when a person asks for it, which usually means a prospect is reading your documentation or pricing during an evaluation. The reason to check it is the opposite of blocking. Named bot allow-lists that still reference NotebookLM will stop the fetch without telling anyone.
Disclaimer: Sources were last checked on 20 July 2026.
