Google has updated one of its help documents to specifically say that ad scheduling isn't compatible campaigns that use Smart Bidding. The previous version of that page said, "Ad scheduling is not compatible with both Smart Shopping campaigns and App campaigns." This change to the help document is causing a lot of confusion but in all honesty, likely means nothing has changed.
UPDATE: Google confirmed nothing changed and they will clarify this document.
Here is a screenshot of this notice:
This was spotted by Adriaan Dekker who posted this on LinkedIn and wrote, "Wow, Ad scheduling goes away for smart bidding? Did they make a mistake with smart campaigns? Or is this for real."
The language was recently changed from the screenshot above from this which has been on the page for years:
Anu Adegbola covered at Search Engine Land saying, "Ad scheduling lets advertisers control when their ads show, aligning campaigns with business hours or peak performance times. Removing this feature for Smart Bidding campaigns reduces control and could impact budget efficiency."
Scott Carruthers commented on the LinkedIn post saying, "I'm not a fan of this at all - it's a step further away from keeping your advertising aligned with your business goals. I fully understand not taking bid adjustments into consideration, but an advertiser should be able to specify when they want their ads to show/not show."
Amalia Fowler also commented on LinkedIn saying, "If it's true, I don't hate this, to be honest. It'd be nice if they were transparent about it, but so many businesses restrict the schedule unnecessarily."
So what is going on? Well Navah Hopkins added, "I can confirm ad scheduling is still a thing for campaigns using smart bidding. You just can't use bid adjustments (which we haven't been able to use for over 5 years)."
So this seems like a wording mistake on this article and maybe this is just causing unnecessary panic and confusion...
We are still waiting to hear back from Google on this, I suspect Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liasion will respond to these threads soon... Again, it seems like this is a nothing burger but just a heads up in case you saw this chatter....
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
Update: Google confirmed our suspicions that nothing changed here:
Confirming that nothing has changed. Ad scheduling remains supported in campaigns using Smart Bidding. We will be updating the Help Center to make that clearer.
— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) January 8, 2025
