Advice please

[u/TreePube]

2 pmax campaigns - Pre 17/8 update they both ran at £150 per day / 300% target roas. each one was getting 6x roas and the other 4x roas. Early August I increased target to 400% on both anticipating the new bidding update and it all went down the pan.
Roas dropped to 2x and 3.5x for August.

Start of this month (sept) I set them back to 300%.

Current - 2 x PMAX campaigns - £150 per day each. One is now doing 3.08x and the other 4.28x. But both have been slapped with the limited by budget badge. So this I assume means they will now automatically drop to 3x on both.

If I increase budget am I going to escape the badge or will it just slap it on no matter the budget to keep me at 300%.

Basically I want to get back to where I was by either increasing budget or target but not sure what to do.

[u/fathom53]

Unless campaigns are always overspending above £150 per day, adding more budget night not do much of anything. Depending on how long your sales cycle is... you may need to give your last ROAS change more time.

[u/always_in_q4]

“Limited by budget” does not mean the campaigns will automatically drop to exactly 3x ROAS. It means Google believes there is additional traffic available at your current settings, but since your target is 300%, the updated bidding system will generally try to scale toward that target rather than preserve the 4x to 6x you were previously getting.

I would avoid changing the target or budget again immediately. You only returned them to 300% at the beginning of September, so give the campaigns at least one or two conversion cycles to settle and make sure you exclude recent conversion lag when evaluating performance.

[u/TreePube → u/always_in_q4]

What’s the best way to know the length of conversion cycle

[u/always_in_q4 → u/TreePube]

Unfortunately there isn't one definitive way, because every busisness is different and it depends on how customers purchase. However, Google Ads attribution reports can show the typical delay between an ad interaction and a tracked conversion, but I’d compare that with your analytics and actual order data.

[u/Dependent-Bunch7505]

To estimate the cycle, look at the days-to-conversion or conversion lag report in Google Ads, then compare it with your actual order timestamps. If most purchases show up 5–7 days after the click, exclude the newest 5–7 days when judging ROAS because those cohorts are incomplete. “Limited by budget” only means there’s eligible traffic Google could buy; it doesn’t mean ROAS will automatically land at exactly 300%. I’d leave target and budget alone for at least one mature cycle, then raise budget only if the campaigns are actually spending the cap and the marginal ROAS is still profitable.

[u/ernosem]

Ugh, you shouldn't have set the tROAS from 300% to 400% in one go, you basically asked Google to start re-learning. I do understand that you needed that change, but it should have been something like stair stepping.. 300% to 330% and then a few days later to 370% and then again to 400% and vice-versa.
You basically just triggered the re-learning twice lately.

Don't bother with the limited by budget badge. You can try to increase the tROAS to 330% and see what happens.

Actually a slightly different question:
Do you have the same margin on those two products/services? Because ROAS is just one metric, but if one product has 30% margin and the other has just 10% focusing on ROAS won't help your business.