Microsoft Ads Removes Max CPC on 1 October: What to Do Now

From October 1, 2026, a new Microsoft Advertising search campaign that uses Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value or Maximize Clicks cannot be given a maximum cost-per-click. Campaigns created before that date keep the setting, and campaigns on a portfolio bid strategy keep it whether new or old. Microsoft announced the change in its August 31 product update.

This post is for the advertiser or agency that runs Microsoft search campaigns and has sixteen days to decide what to do about a control it may have relied on. It sets out the rule, the exemptions, Microsoft's reasoning, and a checklist. It does not predict performance, because Microsoft published no figures and we have none of our own to add.

Max CPC is the ceiling an advertiser can put on what an automated bid strategy pays for a single click. Microsoft's update says that "starting October 1, the Max CPC setting will no longer be available when creating new non-portfolio campaigns" that use Maximize Conversions with a target CPA, Maximize Conversion Value with a target ROAS, or Maximize Clicks. Campaigns created before October 1, 2026 that already use the cap keep it. Max CPC "will remain available for new and existing campaigns using portfolio bid strategies". That is the whole rule as Microsoft states it.

Two things the update does not say. It does not give a date for the change reaching Microsoft Advertising Editor or the API, and it does not say whether existing campaigns will lose the setting later. Trade coverage has speculated on both. We print only what the Microsoft page states, and both questions are open as of September 15.

The table crosses the two things that decide the outcome: when the campaign was created and whether its bid strategy is standard or portfolio. Manual CPC is not on the table because it has no automated target to conflict with, and the update does not mention it.

Microsoft's explanation is short and worth reading in its own words. When an advertiser sets a Max CPC that overrides their own CPA or ROAS target, the update says, this "provides conflicting instructions to the system and causes advertisers to miss their overall desired outcomes, even when the cap is above average CPC". The last clause is the interesting one. Microsoft is saying the damage is not only from caps that bind. A cap that sits above the average still changes what the system bids on the auctions where a high click price would have been worth paying.

The update then names the levers Microsoft wants used instead: budgets, target CPA, target ROAS, conversion value rules and, where appropriate, seasonality adjustments. It adds that its bidding is allowed to beat a target CPA or ROAS regardless of budget status, and describes targets as directional levers that balance volume and efficiency rather than fixed values to be hit. Whether you agree, that framing tells you how the system treats the numbers you give it.

Google's AI Max raises the same question of what an advertiser can still constrain, and the two platforms answer it differently. We laid out those differences in our comparison of the two AI Max products. The Max CPC change is a smaller sentence in the same August update that made Microsoft's AI Max generally available, which we covered alongside its Performance Max reporting changes.

The advertisers most affected are not the ones who set a cap to save money. They are the ones who used it as a guard on brand terms, where a competitor bidding on your name can push a click price far above what the conversion is worth and an automated strategy will pay it to hit volume. A cap made that predictable. Without one, three replacements exist, none of which is a perfect substitute.

Google's version of this problem is the subject of our post on AI Max experiments and brand controls, and the logic transfers: the control that survives on both platforms is a separate brand campaign with its own budget and its own target, not a per-click ceiling.

Sixteen days is enough for the work below, and none of it is wasted if Microsoft's timing slips. Each item routes on what your account looks like today.

If your account structure grew up around caps and you would rather have someone else redraw it before the deadline, our paid media team does this restructuring as a scoped piece of work, with the experiment above as the first step.