Expand your universe of conversions with Smart Bidding Exploration. Marketers often rely on reacting to past performance and focusing on short-term goals, which can lead to missed opportunities. For instance, a mortgage lender might already bid successfully on commonly high-performing keywords such as "mortgage" or "home loan" when advertising on Google Search. These keywords are known to help the lender meet its return on ad spend (ROAS) targets. However, could the lender be overlooking even more potential leads? Today, we are excited to announce Smart Bidding Exploration — the most significant update to our bidding strategies in over a decade. This new tool introduces flexible ROAS targets, enabling the same mortgage lender to bid more frequently on less obvious but potentially high-value queries, such as "how to buy a home." By doing so, Google's AI can uncover new, qualified leads that the lender would not have captured through traditional methods. Smart Bidding Exploration enhances our existing features, such as AI Max for Search campaigns, which ensures advertisers are eligible for relevant, intent-driven searches. While AI Max focuses on maintaining eligibility, Smart Bidding Exploration actively seeks out high-performing searches from a broader array of unique categories within your campaign. Preliminary data shows that campaigns leveraging Smart Bidding Exploration experience an average 18% increase in unique search query categories with conversions and a 19% increase in overall conversions. (Google Internal Data, Global, March 11, 2025 to April 11, 2025) By integrating Smart Bidding Exploration into their marketing strategies, advertisers can unlock new avenues for growth and ensure they are not leaving any potential leads on the table.