> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://cascader.io/blog/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # When jobs range from small repairs to big replacements, what should Google Ads bid toward? - URL: https://cascader.io/blog/google-ads-value-bidding-variable-job-values/ - Published: 2026-11-02T15:00:35.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-08T00:48:35.000Z - Description: Counting enquiries, quotes or booked jobs tells Google every win is the same size. Here's which stage to bid on, how to value each quote, and the order to change things in while the campaign is losing money. - Author: Rick Hecker - Tags: Cascader Answers, Google Ads, Home services Last verified October 2026 Your jobs run from a $400 repair to a $10,000 replacement. The campaign is losing money, and the advice you keep hearing is "use value-based bidding". That advice leaves three questions open: - What should Google Ads bid toward? - What number should each conversion carry? - What do you change first? "What should Google bid toward" hides two decisions. One is which stage of a job counts as the conversion: the enquiry, the quote or the booked job. The other is whether that conversion reaches Google as a plain 1 or with a value attached. Moving the count from one stage to another changes which people the bidder looks for. But as long as every conversion is a 1, a repair quote and a replacement quote look like the same win. A count can tell them apart only by leaving the smaller jobs out, as counting only jobs above a certain value does; a value tells the bidder they differ without dropping any. So bid on the earliest stage where you know roughly what a job is worth. For trades that quote on site, that's the visit where a quote is written. Send each of those conversions with a value: the quote, weighted by how often that kind of quote becomes a job and what the job earns. If you don't record quoted visits as a conversion yet, setting that up is the first piece of work. If the campaign is losing money, cap the budget before you change the signal. The change takes weeks to settle, and Maximize conversion value without a target, the strategy step 5 switches to, tries to spend the whole budget. The worked example throughout is a constructed heating-and-cooling company. Its numbers are invented to make the arithmetic visible. ## A count can't tell the bidder what a job is worth The constructed company writes 36 quotes a month on site: - 24 repairs at $400, which close at 70%; - 8 water-heater replacements at $2,000, which close at 45%; - 4 full system replacements at $10,000, which close at 20%. About 21 of the 36 become booked jobs. Here is what each stage tells the bidder about a repair and a system replacement, depending on how the conversion is sent: If columns extend beyond the page, scroll sideways. With a keyboard, focus the table and use the arrow keys. | Stage counted | Conversions in 30 days | Sent as a count | Sent with one flat value | Sent with a value per job type | | ---------------------- | --------------------------------------- | --------------------------------- | -------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Enquiry (call or form) | More than 36 | Repair 1, system 1 | Repair and system equal | Only a proxy value, such as one by the job type a form answer states; nothing has been quoted yet | | Quoted visit | 36, within days of the click | Repair 1, system 1 | Repair and system equal | Repair $182, system $600 (expected gross profit, worked out below) | | Booked job | About 21, days to weeks after the click | Repair 1, system 1; lost quotes 0 | Repair and system equal; lost quotes 0 | Repair $260, system $3,000 (gross profit); lost quotes 0 | Read down the "count" column first. Target CPA and Maximize conversions treat every counted conversion equally, as the comparison table on Google's [Target ROAS page](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6268637?hl=en&ref=cascader.io) puts it. Whichever stage you count, the bidder's only route to "more" is conversions that cost less. Changing the row changes what kind of person it pays for, not the fact that a repair and a replacement are worth the same to it. The flat-value column behaves the same way. With one value on every conversion, total value is just the count times that value, so maximizing value buys what maximizing the count buys. Google's [value-bidding page](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/15099424?hl=en&ref=cascader.io) also requires that you "report two or more different values". The last column is where the bidder can tell jobs apart. [Maximize conversion value](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7684216?hl=en&ref=cascader.io) "may bid higher for auctions that would result in greater conversion value". The quoted visit is the first row where a per-job value rests on a written quote. An enquiry can carry only a proxy value: Google's [best-practices page](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14792795?hl=en&ref=cascader.io) notes that "Particular answers on lead forms may indicate higher quality leads." The quoted visit also has more conversions than the booked job, and they arrive sooner. Booked-job values are exact, but only one system quote in five ever produces one. ### Check that the quote stage is frequent and quick enough Google's guidance sets two conditions for the stage you bid on. - **Volume.** Its [best-practices page](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14792795?hl=en&ref=cascader.io) says to "choose a goal with a relatively short conversion delay and at least 15 monthly conversions". Target ROAS on Search requires at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days at the conversion tracking level. - **Delay.** "Shorter conversion delays (less than 7 days) are recommended", per the value-bidding page. That page accepts a longer average delay if a percentage of conversions arrive within 7 days of the click. It warns that if no conversion data arrives within 7 days of the click, "or if it takes 7+ days for 100% of conversions to be uploaded to Ads", the initial ramp-up "may take several months". The constructed company's 36 quotes a month clear 15 and arrive within days of the click. Its roughly 21 booked jobs clear the count too, but in this example many arrive weeks after the click. If your quoted visits number fewer than 15 a month, Google's guidance for value bidding isn't met yet. Record quoted visits as a conversion, with their values, while the campaign keeps bidding on the action it bids on now, so the history exists, and revisit when the count is there. If none of your quotes come within a week of the click, or some take longer than a week, expect the slower ramp-up Google describes. ## Check whether any quote can pay for itself Value bidding moves the budget toward the quotes worth most. It can't make a quote worth more than it costs. So run this check before rebuilding anything, using numbers you already have: - last month's spend; - the number of quoted visits it produced; - the expected gross profit of each job type (the next section shows how to work it out). In the constructed company, $10,800 bought 36 quotes, or $300 a quote. The month's quotes carry $9,648 of expected gross profit, $268 a quote. The campaign returns 89 cents of gross profit per dollar and loses about $1,152 a month before overhead. By type, a repair quote carries $182, a water-heater quote $360 and a system quote $600. Compare the average cost per quote with those figures: - **The average quote is worth at least what it costs.** The campaign already pays on average. Go ahead with the steps below. - **The average quote is worth less than it costs, but at least one job type is worth more.** The money is in the mix, and value bidding has something to move toward. Go ahead with the steps below, with the budget capped. The constructed company is here: repair quotes lose $118 each at the average cost, while water heaters and systems clear it. - **Every job type is worth less than the average cost.** Value bidding could only help if one type's quotes cost far less than the average, and an account-wide average can't show you that. Stop here. Hold the budget at a loss you accept for learning, and work on what the quotes earn (your prices, which jobs you quote, your close rate) before rebuilding the bidding signal. If your campaigns or ad groups already separate repair searches from replacement searches, their cost per quoted visit gets you closer to a cost per job type. Use it in place of the average. One warning about the check itself: value the same month at the written quotes and it reports $65,600 against $10,800, a 607% return, while losing $1,152 a month. ## Choose the number each quote sends There are three candidate numbers for each quote. Here they are for the constructed company's job types. Your close rates come from your quote and booking records, your margins from your job costing. If columns extend beyond the page, scroll sideways. With a keyboard, focus the table and use the arrow keys. | Job type | Written quote | Close rate | Gross margin | Expected revenue (quote × close rate) | Expected gross profit (× margin) | | ------------------------ | ------------- | ---------- | ------------ | ------------------------------------- | -------------------------------- | | Repair | $400 | 70% | 65% | $280 | $182 | | Water-heater replacement | $2,000 | 45% | 40% | $900 | $360 | | System replacement | $10,000 | 20% | 30% | $2,000 | $600 | | System ÷ repair | 25.0× | | | 7.1× | 3.3× | Read the bottom row first: - Send written quotes and you tell the bidder a system quote is worth 25 repair quotes. - Weight by close rate and it's worth about seven. - Add margin and it's worth just over three. Each is a different instruction about how hard to chase replacement searches. Written quotes tell the bidder to chase them far harder than they pay. Multiplying every quote by the same figure doesn't fix this. Halve every quote and you get $200, $1,000 and $5,000, still 25 to 1\. Maximize conversion value maximizes total value. Scaling every value by one factor scales every possible total by that same factor, so the same auctions win. A single multiplier does change two things: the return the account reports, and what any Target ROAS number means. A 300% target on halved values asks for 600% in full values. What changes the bidding is close rates and margins that differ by job type. **Send expected gross profit** if you know each job type's margin. Its break-even is a 100% return whatever the mix, because every dollar of value is a dollar of gross profit. **Send expected revenue** if you don't know margins yet. Its break-even is 1 divided by the margin of the mix you sell. In the constructed month that margin is 44%, so break-even is about 227%, and the line moves whenever the mix moves. **Don't send written quotes.** Their break-even in the constructed month is 680%, and it moves with both the mix and the close rates. Three or four job types are enough. The weighting has to happen before the value is sent: Google's [conversion value rules](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10518330?hl=en&ref=cascader.io) adjust values only by audiences, geographic locations or device, plus a "No condition" option that applies only to store visit or store sales actions. If you can't send a weighted number at all, don't fall back to written quotes. For advertisers who can't assign distinct values per conversion, Google's [lead-generation guidance](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/13489421?hl=en&ref=cascader.io) recommends Target CPA bidding for qualified or converted leads. Here, that means counting quoted visits. ## Send one number, once The quote usually lives in a call-tracking tool or in job software, not in Google Ads. Ask yours three things: - Can it send a conversion when a quote is recorded, rather than when the enquiry arrives? - Can it attach a value to that conversion, and from which field? - How does it match the conversion to the ad click? The field the integration sends must hold the weighted number, not the written quote. If that's the field your office types quotes into, keep the written quote somewhere the integration doesn't read. WhatConverts is the example here. Its [Google Ads integration](https://www.whatconverts.com/help/docs/integrations/google-ads-integration/connect-whatconverts-to-google-ads/?ref=cascader.io) sends either the Quote Value or the Sales Value. A separate setting chooses between "No, don't update conversions" and "Yes, update conversions" for when sales values change. Call extension conversions "cannot be updated after sending, regardless of this setting". On the default route below, send the weighted number and choose not to update. After the first week, check in Google Ads that the action's conversions carry different values, and check your tool for failed sends. From the goal swap in step 3 onward (or now, if the campaign already bids on quotes), the quote action should be the only thing the campaign bids on. In the campaign's **Settings → Conversion goals**: - the quote action is Primary, in a goal the campaign selects; - any enquiry or booked-job actions that reach Google Ads are Secondary; - neither sits in a selected custom goal, which bids on included Secondary actions too. An action drives bidding only when it is Primary and its goal is selected, per [Google's goal rules](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10995103?hl=en&ref=cascader.io). A booked job counted beside its own quote pays the bidder twice for one customer, a double count that [the form-and-CRM answer](https://cascader.io/blog/form-fills-delayed-crm-sales-primary-conversions/) walks through. Booked jobs don't have to reach Google Ads for this method to work. Keep them in your own records with the job type, the job's gross profit, the date of the click that produced it and the campaign the lead came from. The monthly check needs each job tied to the clicks that produced it. If your setup can send booked jobs as a separate action, make it Secondary. ### Whether booked jobs should correct the value Google lets you change a recorded conversion later by [conversion adjustment](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7686447?hl=en&ref=cascader.io). Imported conversions without an order ID are matched by click ID and conversion time. - A restatement changes the value but not the count, and affects ROAS strategies. - A retraction removes the conversion and affects CPA and ROAS strategies. - A conversion retracted or restated to zero can't be adjusted again. That gives two routes that keep the units straight, and one to avoid: - **Keep the expected value (the default).** Every quote keeps the weighted value it was sent with. Booked jobs correct the close rates and margins you use for future quotes. Values stay in expected gross profit, and break-even stays at 100%. - **Replace expected with realized.** Restate each won quote to that job's gross profit, not its invoice (the invoice is revenue). Retract each lost quote. Values stay in gross profit. The cost is that, to the extent losses are retracted in time for bidding to read them, the conversions bidding sees shrink toward booked jobs. This route holds only where wins and losses are both decided within the 7-day window described below. If wins are restated in time and losses are retracted later, bidding sees the pattern the next item says to avoid. - **Avoid restating wins while leaving losses at their expected value.** Each win then counts at full value while each loss still carries a share of value it will never earn, so total value runs above what the jobs produce. Timing decides whether bidding sees any of it. Plan as if the 7-day limit applies: a job decided more than a week after its quote corrects your reports, not your bidding. Google's [how-to page](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7686280?hl=en&ref=cascader.io) says: "When retracting or restating conversion values, you have up to 7 days after they're first recorded for autobidding readability." It allows adjustments overall within 54 days. Google's pages differ here: the [overview page](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7686447?hl=en&ref=cascader.io) puts the 7-day rule in a note for Hotel Ads with a 55-day limit, and the [offline-import FAQ](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10029210?hl=en&ref=cascader.io) gives 55 days with no bidding window. ## Change things in this order while you're losing money One job sits outside this sequence: filtering before the click, such as negative keywords, the ad schedule and qualifying questions on forms. It decides who becomes an enquiry, not what a quote is worth, so it doesn't wait for any step here. Note the date of each filtering change, because it shifts the mix of quotes your close rates describe. 1. **Cap the exposure before anything else.** For most campaigns, Google bills no more than 2 times the average daily budget on any particular day, and no more than 30.4 times it in a month ([spending limits](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10486637?hl=en&ref=cascader.io)). A cut doesn't reach back into today. On the day you change the budget, the daily limit is "based on the highest average daily budget that you chose for that day". For the rest of the month, spend won't exceed the new budget times the remaining calendar days ([budget changes](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10487143?hl=en&ref=cascader.io)). - Pick a budget whose double you could lose in a day, and set it now. - If today can't bear twice this morning's budget, pause the campaign until tomorrow. - [The $335-click answer](https://cascader.io/blog/google-ads-335-click-after-conversion-tracking-fix/) shows how to bound a trial's loss. 2. **Check what the campaign bids on.** Run the goal check above before anything else changes. 3. **Change the goal before the strategy.** If your quoted visits number at least 15 a month and the quote action isn't yet what the campaign bids toward, move the goal first, on your current count-based strategy. Below 15 a month, leave the goal where it is and record quoted visits with their values, as the volume check above says. Google's value-bidding page says you "can begin passing the values while bidding to CPA prior to enabling value-based bidding". - If you're moving from enquiries to quotes on Target CPA, Google's [lower-funnel steps](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/15815830?hl=en&ref=cascader.io) apply. Put the quote action in a category such as Qualified lead. Mark it Primary but don't use it for bid optimization yet: leave its goal unselected, so the campaign keeps bidding on the enquiry goal it selects now. Track it for at least 2–3 conversion cycles. Then swap goals, so the quote goal is selected and the enquiry goal no longer is, and raise the CPA target to the quote stage's historically achieved cost. - That page covers moving down the funnel on Target CPA only. It doesn't describe moving up from booked jobs, or bidding with Maximize conversions. 4. **Send values long enough, and only new ones.** Google's pages give different waits before switching to value bidding. The value-bidding page says 3 weeks or 1–2 conversion cycles, whichever is longer. The best-practices page says at least 4 weeks or 3 conversion cycles. Use the longer. - The value-bidding page also says "Avoid backfilling historical value data", so don't re-send past quotes with values. - A conversion cycle here is Google's conversion delay, ["the time from click to the time the conversion is shared back to Google Ads"](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6268633?hl=en&ref=cascader.io). 5. **Switch to Maximize conversion value with no target, on the capped budget.** Without a target it "tries to fully spend your average daily budget". If the campaign has been underspending, Google warns this "could significantly increase your spend", which is why step 1 comes first. Through Google's 7–14 day learning phase, avoid "frequent manual changes to budgets, targets (CPA or ROAS), or conversion goals" ([primary and secondary actions](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/11461796?hl=en&ref=cascader.io)). 6. **Add a Target ROAS later, above break-even.** - Search needs at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days at the conversion tracking level. - If your conversions reach Google Ads as offline conversion imports (ask your tool how it sends them), Google's import FAQ recommends waiting 6 weeks after including new values before adopting Target ROAS. - Set the target in the unit you send: above 100% for expected gross profit, or above 1 ÷ your mix margin for expected revenue (about 227% in the constructed month). - Google's [best-practices page](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14792795?hl=en&ref=cascader.io) lists, among "a few considerations" for budgets and targets: "If using a ROAS target, ensure the budget is unconstrained, allowing the system to optimize bidding strategies without limitations." That consideration points the other way from this plan. The plan keeps the step 1 cap while the campaign is losing money; the cap is this article's rule, set from what the business can afford to lose, not Google's. With the cap kept, the campaign can be limited by budget, and since August 17, 2026, budget-limited target campaigns ["now perform more consistently toward your bid target"](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/17061251?hl=en&ref=cascader.io). A target set exactly at break-even asks for zero gross profit. Leave room above it for overhead. [What a Target Does When the Money Runs Out](https://cascader.io/blog/what-a-target-does-when-money-runs-out/) works through that change. ## Judge it on booked jobs, not on reported value Once values flow, the value column holds a forecast. Judge each month on the jobs instead: 1. Take one month's clicks. 2. Wait until their quotes have been decided. How long that takes is your own quote-to-decision time. 3. Compare that month's spend with the gross profit of the jobs those clicks produced. In the constructed company, $10,800 bought 36 quotes forecast at $9,648, which is 89 cents a dollar. Suppose the decided month shows: - 17 repairs, $4,420 of gross profit; - 3 water heaters, $2,400; - 1 system, $3,000. That totals $9,820, or 91 cents a dollar. With no system job it would have been $6,820, or 63 cents. That swing comes from the system line. At four quotes a month and a 20% close rate, most months bring zero or one system job, and each one moves the result by $3,000\. Correct the repair rate monthly. Judge the water-heater and system rates, at eight and four quotes a month, over several months of quotes before you change them. If the realized ratio stays below the forecast month after month, the multipliers are wrong. Compare each type's forecast jobs with its actual jobs and send corrected values. If corrected values still leave every job type worth less than its quotes cost, the campaign is buying work the business can't profit from at its current prices. Then the budget comes down, whatever the bidder is told. The value column will run ahead of the bank account by however long your quotes take to decide. That gap is the price of teaching the bidder at the quote instead of at the job. The booked jobs are how you find out whether the price was worth paying. If your bigger jobs need money paid out when they start and are paid for later, the bank account falls behind a second time, after the booking; [The payment that buys the next installation](https://cascader.io/blog/the-payment-that-buys-the-next-installation/) works through that timing in a worked cash calendar for a constructed business.