A recurring question on r/PPC: a campaign is optimizing for low-quality micro-conversions, and the operator wants to know whether to rebuild, drop to Maximize Conversions, or keep Maximize Conversion Value. It is the right question asked at the wrong layer. The bidding strategy is almost never the disease. It is the symptom of a conversion set that is lying to the algorithm.
This post is the decision I walk B2B SaaS accounts through when the leads coming in are junk. The headline: switching between Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value fixes nothing until your value signal is trustworthy — and once it is, the choice becomes obvious.
What each strategy actually optimizes for
Maximize Conversions counts. It spends your budget to produce the largest number of conversions, treating every conversion as interchangeable. A $50k enterprise demo and a throwaway ebook download are the same event to it. Maximize Conversion Value weighs. It spends your budget to produce the most total value, bidding harder on auctions it predicts will return more. As Google’s own documentation puts it, value-based bidding “may bid higher for auctions that would result in greater conversion value.”
The critical dependency lives in that sentence. Maximize Conversion Value can only prefer high-value leads if you have told it which leads are high-value. If every conversion arrives with the same value — or no value at all — the two strategies collapse into the same behaviour, and you have gained nothing by switching. This is the single most common reason a “value” migration produces no lift: the values were never real. For the full decision between value-based bidding and target CPA once your values are clean, see our breakdown of Maximize Conversion Value vs Target CPA.
Low-quality leads are a data problem before a bidding problem
When a campaign floods you with junk, the algorithm is not malfunctioning. It is doing precisely what you rewarded it to do. If your primary conversion set includes newsletter signups, gated-content downloads, or free-tool usage alongside real demo requests, Maximize Conversions will rationally chase the cheapest, most abundant of those — the low-intent ones. The junk is the optimal answer to the objective you set.
Changing the bid strategy without changing the conversion set just swaps one flawed objective for another. Move to Maximize Conversion Value while those micro-conversions still carry a default or inflated value, and you have simply asked the algorithm to chase junk it now believes is valuable. The fix is upstream: decide what a real conversion is, and make the account count only that. Our guide to optimizing for SQLs, not raw leads covers the mechanics of demoting soft actions out of the primary set.
The order of operations that actually works
Do these in sequence. Skipping to step four is why most bid-strategy swaps disappoint.
- Audit the primary conversion set. Only true revenue-predictive actions (demo request, qualified trial, sales contact) should be primary. Demote everything else to “secondary” so it informs reporting but not bidding.
- Get a real value onto each conversion. For paid events, pass actual annual value. For lead-stage events, derive a value from historical close rate × ACV. A demo request that closes 22% of the time at $6k ACV is worth roughly $1,320 — not a flat $1.
- Close the loop with your CRM. Import offline conversions so the algorithm learns which clicks became SQLs and won deals, not just which became form fills. This is what lets value reflect real pipeline. Our offline conversion stack guide walks through the wiring.
- Then, and only then, pick the bid strategy. With clean values flowing and mixed deal sizes — which describes almost every B2B SaaS account — Maximize Conversion Value is the correct default.
When Maximize Conversions is still right
Maximize Conversions is not obsolete. It is the correct choice in two situations. First, when every conversion really is worth about the same — a single-price product with one lead type and no meaningful spread between customers. Second, as a stabilising fallback when volume is too thin for a value model to be reliable, or immediately after cleaning up a conversion set, to let the account re-learn on the honest signal before you layer value on top.
A useful test: if you exported your last 90 days of won deals and the values clustered tightly around one number, Maximize Conversions costs you little. If they ranged from $2k to $80k, you are leaving money on the table every day you bid by count instead of value. Most SaaS accounts are firmly in the second camp, which is why building a conversion value ladder pays for itself quickly.
The micro-conversion trap in Performance Max
Performance Max makes this worse because it will happily find the cheapest conversion across all of Google’s inventory. If a junk micro-conversion is in the mix, PMax is the most efficient junk-finder you have ever deployed. Operators see this as the campaign “going rogue,” but it is the conversion set steering it into the gutter.
The remedy is the same order of operations, applied harder: strip the primary conversion set to revenue-predictive actions, feed real values, and give the campaign two to three weeks to re-learn before judging it. If the account has already trained itself on bad signals, you may need a deliberate retraining pass — we cover that in retraining Performance Max off micro-conversions. Rebuilding from scratch is rarely necessary once the conversion set is honest.
What if value-based bidding still brings junk?
If you have clean values and Maximize Conversion Value is still delivering weak pipeline, the problem has moved one layer down: your derived values are wrong, or your close-rate assumptions are stale. A campaign told that a certain lead type is worth $1,320 will keep buying it even if those leads have quietly stopped closing. Revisit derived values quarterly against actual close rates and ACV drift.
The other culprit is attribution latency. B2B SaaS deals close months after the click, so the value the algorithm sees today reflects pipeline that has not matured. If your conversion window is shorter than your sales cycle, value-based bidding is optimizing on a fraction of the real signal. Widen the window before you blame the strategy.
The bottom line
Max Conversions versus Max Conversion Value is a real decision, but it is the last one in the chain, not the first. When leads are low-quality, the fastest path to better pipeline is almost never a bid strategy toggle. It is fixing what the account counts as a conversion, putting honest values on those conversions, and closing the CRM loop so the algorithm learns from revenue instead of form fills.
Do that, and the strategy choice answers itself: mixed deal sizes and clean values mean value-based bidding, every time. If you want a second set of eyes on whether your conversion set is steering spend into junk, a focused consult can map it against your last 90 days of closed pipeline in under an hour.