The news: Google Ads is piloting a new tool, dubbed Product Value Optimization, that lets advertisers adjust the value of conversions for their products to hit specific business goals, per Search Engine Roundtable. Google’s automated bidding system then bids to maximize those values.

Three key components of the beta:

• Advertisers can multiply conversion values for specific products or product attributes, such as by brand or category.
• They can make adjustments at the campaign level, rather than the account level.
• The tool enables real-time optimization for Performance Max and Shopping campaigns.

The upside: Advertisers can now tell Google which conversions matter most, so brands can steer bidding toward their most important campaign goals.

The use cases are inventory-specific. A brand can multiply the value of seasonal products, such as holiday items, to clear that inventory first. It can apply the same multiplier to its highest-margin products to earn the greatest profit.

The tool also offloads work. Advertisers don’t have to manage conversions that are defined differently across products. Google’s automated bidding system absorbs these values as rules and applies them at the speed and scope of real-time auctions far more effectively than a human.

The bigger challenge: Google is asking advertisers to put even more trust in its automated bidding system. That system used to have one job: drive conversions at large. Now it has to juggle conversions that reflect different values to different advertisers. The added potential for mistakes—and the difficulty in untangling the effects of those mistakes—could prove too much for advertisers to adopt the tool.

Advertisers already have hesitations around using AI for bidding. Just 16% of US paid media professionals use AI for bid optimization and smart bidding, per Unbounce and Ascend2. Lack of trust in decision-making is a key reason why many marketers still view AI as an analyst, not a strategist.