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Seeking Advice: PMax’s Bid Higher for New Customers vs. Only Bid for New Customers
Posted by on August 25, 2025 at 9:39 amHello experts,
I recently came across a YouTube video advising against using PMax’s "Bid higher for new customers" feature. The creator suggested that "Only bid for new customers" is a more effective strategy for acquiring new customers. However, I’m skeptical about this recommendation.
Here’s my perspective:
I’ve been impressed with PMax’s remarketing capabilities—it delivers more aggressive and efficient ad exposure compared to my previous Display, Demand Gen, and Shopping campaigns. Ideally, I’d like PMax to balance both remarketing and new customer acquisition, which makes the "Bid higher for new customers" feature seem like a perfect fit.
I’ve also learned that:
This feature requires a high-quality customer list (1,000+ valid emails) to perform well;
Enabling it in an existing pmax campaign may trigger a new learning phase.
I’d greatly appreciate your insights:
Is "Bid higher for new customers" really as ineffective as some claim?
How would you compare these two strategies in practice?
Thanks in advance for sharing your expertise!
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1 Reply
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I think the promise is great, but in practice I find it lacking.
You upload a bunch of past customers, and first of all, Google barely matches any, even though you provide email, address, phone number, name, and so on.
And then, when you turn on only bid for new customers, it just applies a bid adjustment whenever someone is not in that already watered down list.
IMHO, making a few custom audiences in GA4 that exclude existing customers (for example, people who access your portal, or log in, etc.) and excluding past converters works better.
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I would most don’t use the feature correctly to be begin. Having a list size above a few thousands would be the best place to start. Both features are only as good as the customer data within your ad account. Most bands are better off not using either feature if they don’t have a good customer list.
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I think it’s a great feature but if your P Max is already working I don’t see a point in taking the risk in changing the bid strategy. If you are after you customers, I would have facebook be top of the funnel, where customers first interact. Then later on P Max can retarget them if the conversion tracking is set up correctly. Google is inherently more intent based compared to FB where you create demand!
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Bid higher for new customers usually works better than only bid because it lets PMax keep the remarketing engine running while still leaning toward fresh buyers, only bid cuts off retargeting completely and tends to kill volume unless you’ve got a very large, clean list.
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