Microsoft Removes Max CPC From New Campaigns on 1 October. Your Ceiling Becomes an Average.
From 1 October, Microsoft Advertising removes the Max CPC field when you create a new non-portfolio campaign on Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value or Maximize Clicks. Campaigns built before that date keep the ceiling they already have. This is a build deadline, not a spend deadline, and it is seventeen days away.
Microsoft published the change in its August product roundup, in a section headed “Improving performance: Updates to Max CPC for new campaigns”. Microsoft’s stated reason is that a Maximum CPC overrides an advertiser’s own CPA and ROAS targets, gives the system conflicting instructions, and causes advertisers to miss their desired outcomes even when the cap sits above average CPC. Two carve-outs survive. Campaigns created before 1 October keep any Max CPC they already have. Portfolio bid strategies keep it, new and existing.
Our math: a ceiling and a target bound different things. A ceiling bounds one auction. A target bounds an average, and an average is indifferent to how it is reached. Take a Target CPA of $150 CAD and a conversion rate of four percent. One hundred clicks produce four conversions, so the target permits $600 CAD of spend, which is an average CPC of $6.00 CAD. That average survives a single click at $120 CAD, provided the other ninety-nine land at about $4.85 CAD. The target is met exactly. Twenty percent of the budget went to one click. The ceiling was the only control that made that outcome impossible.
Our read: the same Microsoft post states that targets are not rigid values that must be met, but directional levers that help the system balance volume and efficiency. Read them together. The control being withdrawn is the rigid one. The control offered in its place is described by the platform itself as directional. That may still be the better trade in most accounts, and Microsoft points to experiments as the way to find out. It is not a like-for-like swap, and treating it as one is how a fourth-quarter build ends up holding its target while the click prices inside it do not.
Before 1 October, list the Microsoft campaigns you intend to build this quarter and decide which need a ceiling. After that date the ceiling lives in one place, inside a portfolio bid strategy, and the portfolio has to exist before the campaign does.
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Sources
Microsoft Advertising, “AI Max for Search and other product news for August 2026”, Kevin Salat, page dated 31 August 2026: the section “Improving performance: Updates to Max CPC for new campaigns” (the 1 October start date, the three named bid strategies, the existing-campaign and portfolio carve-outs, the stated rationale, and the recommendation to use experiments), and the closing paragraph on targets as directional levers rather than rigid values. Read directly, 14 September 2026.
Search Engine Roundtable, “Microsoft Advertising Max CPC Won’t Be Available For New Campaigns On Oct 1”: corroboration that the change was also sent to advertisers by email, and that Microsoft said further updates on Max CPC would follow. Accessed 14 September 2026.
Last verified: 14 September 2026
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Pakhiateau & Co is a marketing accountability firm. We install closed-loop tracking, audit the pipeline, and reallocate spend to what produces deposited cash, not impressions. The Read is our weekly account of what changed in paid media and search, and what it does to a budget.