When marketers react to past performance and short-term goals, they can miss opportunities.

For example, a mortgage lender likely already bids successfully on high-performing, reliable queries like "mortgage" or "home loan” when advertising on Search. Google's systems know these queries will generally help them achieve their ROAS targets. But is the lender missing even more leads?

Today, we’re announcing Smart Bidding Exploration — our biggest update to bidding in over a decade. With new, flexible ROAS targets, the same lender can now open itself up to bid on less obvious but potentially highly valuable queries more often, like "how to buy a home". This allows Google AI to find new, qualified leads that the lender wouldn't have captured otherwise.

This new tool builds on existing features like AI Max for Search campaigns, which ensures advertisers are eligible for relevant, intent-driven searches. Smart Bidding Exploration complements it by actively pursuing high-performing searches from a wider range of unique categories within your campaign.

Campaigns using Smart Bidding Exploration see, on average, an 18% increase in unique search query categories with conversions and a 19% increase in conversions.^*

^{*Google Internal Data, Global, March 11, 2025 to April 11, 2025}